Saturday, February 20, 2010

Post Snowpocalypse Maintenance

For those who may not have experienced three feet of snow on their roof, there are aftereffects.  The snow starts to melt, and slides, and fills the gutters, and melts and refreezes, creating ice dams.

A homeowner can ignore these, hoping the weak winter sun will melt it properly so it does no damage, but that’s dumb, because it’s still in the 20s at night, so there’s no “proper” melting possible.

So today, to prevent major roof damage, my heroic husband went up and cleared part of the roof, then emptied the front gutter (the one on the side of the house away from afternoon sun—the back of the house didn’t have ice dams).  Here’s some of what he pulled out:




And, after working for two hours on the roof (up and down the ladder, chiseling at the ice, pulling two-foot-long chunks out and tossing them), he helped Number Two finish building this:


That fort is built with probably half the ice chunks, chinked with snow like a log cabin. Pretty cool, huh?

Me? I did grocery shopping, client work, committee work, and dinner. I’m such a good little housewife. *sigh*

5 comments:

Ava Quinn said...

Can I move in to the snow fort? It just looks so gosh darn cool.

Victoria said...

Cool fort! That's a lot of ice though. Yikes!
I'm not asking to move in. Too cold for me! LOL

Natalie J. Damschroder said...

LOL!

Thanks for the cool remarks--I passed them on. Sorry, Ava, Number Two doesn't want the responsiblity of you moving into a place with no roof and no food. LOL But she was really pleased that you guys liked it!

Susan Gourley/Kelley said...

I wouldn't want to have to storm that fort but I hope it led to some really great snow ball battles. The slowly melting snow is great for snow balls. I miss my kids being young enough to build forts and insist we join them in a war.

Natalie J. Damschroder said...

I don't think they actually got around to fighting. LOL They were both too tired!