Metropolitan Rural

So, how did you spend your 4th of July?  Me, I went to bed early in anticipation of my 6:42 AM tee time on Saturday morning.   Unfortunately, I was kept awake until the wee hours of the morning by neighbors who don’t realize that fireworks are illegal in the city of St. Louis.  Sure, as a kid I enjoyed my share of fireworks being in a rural town.  But my enjoyment stopped during daylight hours of stuffing firecrackers in anthills.  We’d always somehow end up with a bunch of bottle rockets and I’d shoot them off to be done with them, but they are kind of boring. 

For my money, I prefer to go and watch the pros do what they do.  Even more so now that we live in a city.  The density of housing is such that I don’t feel comfortable shooting flaming paper and explosives into the air.  But, hey, that’s just me.  Obviously my neighbors do not share the same view point! 

Lucky for me, there was an excellent fireworks display at Sublette Park on Saturday (sponsored by the Southwest Garden Neighborhood).  It was really quite a nice display.  The park was filled with families when we got there a little after 8 that evening.  The playground was packed full of kids and ours promptly disappeared into the crowd of others.  He returned when it was getting closer to dark and the fireworks. 

The best part of all, it took only 5 minutes to get there and find a place, and less than 10 minutes to walk back to the car and drive home!

Now that I’m finally ready to start posting again, it would figure that I would end up sick yesterday and miss it!

So, about the time we left off from our blogging adventure, I came home from work and sat down on the bean bag chair in the living room.  I relaxed and leaned back to rest my head.  Looking up, I noticed a distinctly wet spot on the ceiling above me.  It was right in the middle of a patched portion of the ceiling that had been repaired by the previous owners after the roof had leaked.  Unfortunately, their idea of fixing a leaky slate roof involved a bucket of tar and a putty knife. 

With all the rain we had this spring, a leaky roof in early June was a big deal.  I have only one call to make for the slate roof.  I’ve had repairs done in the past by Old World Roofing and wouldn’t dare let anyone else touch my roof without their approval.  They stopped by the next day to have a look.  Turns out the flashing around the base of the chimney was pretty much shot.  I guess 87 years of wear was a bit too much for the old copper.  The bad news was, the flashing repair wasn’t going to help entirely without finally getting the tuckpointing done on the chimney too. 

We’d been putting off that repair as we fixed gutters, downspouts and other plumbing/electrical work.  But, with a wet ceiling and more rain in the forecast, it was time to get it done.  While the roofer had a tuckpoint come out and have a look, their estimate was to redo the entire chimney, top to bottom (and not exactly at rock bottom prices).  The bulk of the chimney problem was the top 8-10 courses, with only a couple of spots in need of fixing elsewhere.  I decided to go with another recommendation I’d been given and used Carl Milbourn Tuckpointing.

Everything is now done and looking good.  I’d take a picture for you, except it’s tough even for me to see with trees and houses blocking much of the view.  I was a little scared to see the shiny, new copper flashing and cricket on the roof after that was done considering all the copper theft going on nowadays.  At least I haven’t noticed any more wet spots on the ceiling at this point, and the ceiling seems to have held up to the water it took.  There’s a small stain that needs to be painted over, but since we never painted over the plaster patch there yet, it needs to be done anyway.

So, one problem down.  Oh, did I mention that one of my original light fixtures quite working last night?  Not a burned out bulb either, the whole fixture is just… dead!  Guess I’ll be calling my favorite electrician today!