Well, it seems like Mark is gone. He was my neighbor up at the main house. He wasn’t doing the repair work that he’d agreed to do and had failed to pay some of the rent he owed Susan. Today would have been his last day there, but it seems like he finished moving a week or so ago.
So, Susan has asked me if I would look in on the place and make sure it is alright: make sure the pipes aren’t freezing and check on the leak in the roof that necessitated some of the repairs that Mark was supposed to do.
Tuesday I went up there and discovered that the leak was much worse than I’d previously realized. It has been raining heavily for the last few days (no snow, hehe) and one entire section of the hallway leading to the back part of the house had leaks all over. Yesterday I brought buckets up to try to catch all of leaks, mopped the floor, and did my best to site the buckets to catch as much as possible.
Today I went up at Susan’s urging to see if maybe stretching some plastic over the roof would work as a temporary fix. I found a small pond on the roof. You can see from the picture that there is a sloping section and a flat section to the left of that. Where these two sections join, water is supposed to flow out of a small drain hole at the back of the house but it had become clogged. I cleared that and swept all the water out, but there was no way to cover that area with plastic, because water would just flow in from the rest of the flat section of the roof.
The “flat” section actually has a small peak in the middle, running down the length of it, covered in cheap tin, sealed by tar. There is a lip around the entire edge with holes drilled through to let the water out. It is very poorly designed and I think it must have been temporary when they built the house. At least, I have a hard time believing it was meant to be permanent.
I have suggested a few possible temporary fixes to Susan, ranging from $20 to $150, but I think the entire roof needs to be re-framed and shingled, which would probably cost upwards of $1000 just for materials. But even if she wanted to do that, it would have to wait until after the rainy season, so I don’t expect to be doing a lot of out-door work on that anytime soon.
Meanwhile, I continue to get stuff done around the cabin here and there. The weather has been pretty wet but not too cold. I managed to rig a make-shift “blower” for the wood stove, which helps spread the heat downstairs a little better so I am nice and cozy for the time being. 
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