Took 4 weekends to fix a simple window leak in my 1950s house

Started with a little water stain on the kitchen ceiling after a heavy rain. Spent the first weekend poking around the roof, replaced a few shingles. Second weekend I caulked all the window trim on the north side. Third weekend I finally pulled off the interior drywall and found the actual leak was running down inside the wall from a gap in the siding above the window. $30 in flashing tape and an afternoon later it was done. Anyone else have a repair that snowballed for no good reason?

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2 Comments

emerycarr1d ago

The "replace a few shingles" part is what gets me. Once you start pulling shingles on a 1950s house, you usually find out the ones next to them are brittle too, and then you're basically doing half a side of the roof. I had a similar thing with a leak last year where I thought it was just a bad shingle but it turned out the whole flashing around the chimney was shot. By the time I was done, it was basically a new roof section instead of a quick patch. The good news is that flashing tape is way cheaper than a roofer, so you probably came out ahead in the end.

barbara_taylor831d ago

Is it really that big of a deal though?