Nope, I didn't have anybody take a picture. And I'm not sure why. You can't truly appreciate all that was involved without them. Oh well, should have thought of it sooner.
You see, there was a gutter at the church that is in "disrepair". Of course the broken gutter would have to be at the highest part of the building (second story). One guy at church asked me about it, but I did not know what he was talking about. And then Pastor pointed out the "disrepair" which, of course, meant it needed to be fixed. So, being the handyman that I am, that left me with two choices: 1) figure out how to fix it and fit it into my too-busy-right-now schedule or 2) find somebody in the church who could fix it and meet them at church on my day off to fix it. I went for the former.
Did I mention that I'm not really that "handy" in the "handyman" sense? For some goofy reason, I thought this repair job could be accomplished in about 30 minutes by climbing up on the roof, sliding the fallen flashing back under the shingles and screwing them (through the shingles) into the roof. I was wrong.
First of all (and it's a good thing), Stan pointed out to me that putting screws through the shingles (even at the very end of the roof) would sorta defeat the purpose of having shingles. Once I made a repair in this fashion, I would have a permanent leak. I definitely felt less than handy and a little less than intelligent after he revealed this. He was nice about it, but I was just plain thinking stupid thoughts when I came up with that original idea!
So Stan and I were up on the second story roof sizing up the situation. Not only had the gutter slipped away from the roof, but the piece of trim board that was supposed to be attached to the roof (and the gutter attached to it) was also coming off. We ended up screwing the trim board back into the edge of the roof where it belonged and re-securing the part of the gutter that was in "disrepair". It certainly does not look professional upon close inspection, but I think it will direct the water in the proper direction and, I don't think too many people will climb up to the second story roof to look at it, so we should be good.
This little 30 minute project took up most of the afternoon between running to the hardware store, hauling ladders around, drilling, riveting and our Laurel-and-Hardy-like. I say it was "like" Laurel and Hardy because, I don't know which one was the little skinny one, but neither Stan nor I look like him! Anyway, the routine started when he had the baby food jar which contained the screws we were going to use. Stan had them, I needed them, and I saw he was going to toss them to me. My first thought was to say "no" and go get them, but then I thought, "Aw, I can catch." Well, I THOUGHT I could catch, but obviously I could not. In my defense, I had something in my right hand and my left hand's only purpose in life is to keep my body balanced by providing equal weight on that side.
It was a good thing Stan did not laugh too hard at my lack of coordination. Thirty minutes later we were at the hardware store getting the necessary equipment to do our work along with some light bulbs for the church. We found one odd-shaped bulb that we needed and Stan proceeded to hold the old bulb up next to it for comparison purposes. I still can't figure out how, but the thing managed to jump out of his hand and fall to the floor. "Clean up on aisle three!". We couldn't help but laugh.
But after all of this, I have no pictures. No pictures of us picking up broken glass. No pictures of big men climbing little ladders to get on the roof or pictures of us laying down, head first peering over the side of the roof 40 feet off the ground. No pictures of Jason and me lifting a 20 foot A-frame ladder up to the first story roof when the 8 foot ladder would have worked just fine. We put our lives in danger and I didn't even think to have someone take a picture. Bummer.
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