I'll Refer Them to My Worst Enemy - Part 2

Read part 1 here.

After all that time and stress, we thought it finally got fixed....

• It rained and water came streaming down the walls of the garage, starting just above where the roof and walls meet and it was wet high up. See photo. It wasn't raining when the photo was taken. It was a lot worse than the photo when it rained. You can see all the mold that was going on.
  
  We called the contractor back out and the roofer showed up and looked at it. Said that water higher up was just wicking up. Said it was the gutter system, that it was clogged and water was feeding behind the flashing. It was old and we needed a new one. Well, just great! We can't see what's going on on the outside as it is way up on the second story and that side of the house borders the neighbor's fenced yard so we really can't see anything unless we were on top of the garage. We took his word for it.
  


• We called a couple gutter guys that didn't return my calls and finally got Home Depot to came out and look at it but he said the job was too small for them. They have a minimum. Ok, that was a week lost waiting to find that out. We finally found another guy that came out and looked at it and said he'd be back out soon. It took a couple of weeks before he showed up.



• When he did show up it turned out he was a really nice guy. Pushed the gutter out to look at it and said everything is as it should be. He could replace it but it wouldn't stop the leak. He took a hose up on the roof and said the water was pooling towards the bottom of the roof, that it flattened out too much for shingles. He said he has seen that before. The ice and water shield doesn't always stop leaks if the slope is pretty flat. Over a hundred dollars but cheap for the time he put into it and he was paying a second employee and had the machines all fired up to make new gutters. It's just that the roof still leaks and it wasn't a gutter problem.
  


• We called the roofers back and told them that the gutter guy said it wasn't the gutter, it was the roof that was leaking. The roofer said, "what does a gutter guy know about roofs". My husband told him, "look, you told us it was the gutter so we paid to have a gutter guy out and he says it is the roof." The roofer said he would be out to look at it.


• Nothing, nothing and nothing. Mold is really bad now, the inside of the garage, even on the first floor near the foundation wall, was saturated and slimy. Another couple of weeks goes by. I see the roofer pull up in front of my house when I was working on our front porch stairs. I wave. They go to the neighbors house. Apparantly the neighbor talked to them while they worked on our house and they contracted them to do some work on theirs. When I saw them go to the neighbors house I was so livid I couldn't even go outside. I knew I would lose it.


• Christmas came and went and we made some more phone calls asking when they were coming out as we still have water streaming into our garage. They said their workers were not showing up for work because of the holidays. How nice they all got such long holidays.
  


• My husband had had it and had made it known to them. Well, last Friday the son of the owner of this construction company comes out with the roofer. They look at the mess and said it looks like the ice and water shield isn't keeping the water out. NO DAH, do you think??!!!! They said the roofer would be out the next day, Saturday, to take the shingles off of the lowest part of the roof and put a membrane of some sort down instead. I told them we couldn't be home (had an appointment in Pittsburgh and also went to see the Louis Comfort Tiffany exhibit) but they said they could do it without going into the garage.


• We returned Saturday evening and I could see nothing was done. But it had rained and was kind of windy.


• I'm not sure what the conversation Monday morning was between my husband and the company, but I was super surprised Monday afternoon to hear hammering on the garage roof. I didn't go out and greet them this time as I figured the guy was pretty mad being sent out in 25 degrees weather. But who should be mad here?
  


• If I had to do it over again, I'd put on tin or steel roof panels myself. You can't see the garage roof even from the upstairs windows, only from the next street over between the houses. Even though I am afraid of being up high, I'd get used to it eventually, and that would have been less stress than going through the last 4 1/2 months.

It hasn't rained yet to find out if it is fixed. I'm crossing my fingers.
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