Man Up

It was a beautiful sunny 60 degrees in Chagrin Falls today. So what did I do? I spent the afternoon on my roof, rebuilding the chimney crown. Your chimney, of course, is bricks. You might not have stopped to think about it (I really had not) but something has to cap it those bricks. That something is a chimney crown. It looks like this:

I should have thought to take up the camera and get a picture of ours, but, oh well.

There has been water coming in the twin's room when it rains. Since it usually happens when there is a lot of wind accompanying the rain, I suspect that cracks along the side are the real culprit. But the mortar of the crown itself had a lot of cracks, so it couldn't hurt to replace that as well. 

Anyway, so I climbed the ladder around noon with a hammer and chisel, and started pounding away. It took about an hour and a half to get it all. To be honest, I thought that was pretty good, since mortar can sometimes be persistent. Then I hauled up a gallon jug of water and a 60-pound bag of mortar mix. By the way, for those of you who haven't seen my house, it's a fair distance. I measured the drop from peak to ground, today, at 21 feet. 

(The drop in the back is even worse.)

Then it was mix the mortar, slap it down, and form a nice pyramid. At first, I could use the trowel. But then it was gloved hands and finally, bare hands with water on them to smooth it out.

Of course I also shoved some fresh stuff into the larger gaps between the bricks and the mortar. And on a related note, I took the opportunity to hammer down the roofing nails which had popped up, and then smothered them with goo.

How did I do? I suppose we'll find out when it next rains, which could be tonight.

Sure, it's not Hemingway driving an ambulance during World War I. But it was still pretty butch, if you ask me.

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