An End to Winter (and Rain)

It has been a long wet winter out here in California. It feels like weeks since I've seen the sun, but lately the weather has been lightening up a little and drying out a bit. We finally feel like we can get back out to the garage and work on the boat without either freezing or getting soggy.

We rent an old house with a detached garage and the landlord isn't too invested in the garage (both good and bad for us). It has given us a lot of latitude to make the garage into a proper workshop which is excellent. The downside is that the roof is probably 25 years overdue to be replaced. The landlord has no intention of replacing it so we've had to deal with all the mess from the rainy winter. The shingles constantly shed little rocks everywhere and if you turn off the lights there's a constellation of tiny holes in the roof. The previous shingles(old wooden ones underneath the asphalt shingles) weep water in and drip it in odd locations around the garage.

Add a record rainy season and you have a recipe for a very very frustrating winter. We were catching water in buckets all over the garage but it just became too much. It was leaking into all the woodworking tools and getting everywhere.

T was mad because the rain was leaking all over his expensive tools, pretty much leaking everywhere except over the boat. It was rather ironic that the rain fell over everything except the one thing meant to come in contact with water.

T finally decided that the only solution was to cover the roof in heavy duty plastic and staple it down. The roof is half rotten in more that a few places, so to get up there and staple down all this plastic was a tricky endeavor. It looks tacky, but it works! The only problem was that it caused the water to weep down the wall on one side of the garage, but there was no more leaking on the tools.

Tacky!!!!

I think the rain was actually leaking up from the slab at some points and it puddled in the area where we were keeping the cel-o-fil and wood flour, getting the boxes all wet. Thankfully all that stuff is in plastic bags so no harm done. It did however get our footwell piece wet and caused some staining and mold which is crappy.

Footwell water stains

Water leaking up from the slab and getting our precious wood pieces wet.