Ice Dam[age]

 

 

Ice Ice Baby Header

 

 

 

 

 

Ice Dam

Remember that phone call we got about the ceiling leaking? Flash forward. We have the situation under control now and learned a few things about how to handle an ice dam. Firstly, we should have seen the signs. They were written on the wall roof. We know the deal now and have to say, it’s not so much fun. A little preventative maintenance is much better than a whole lot of cleanup.

So what is an ice dam?

Looks a little something like this:

What is an Ice Dam

 

Oh hmmm yes. It does look rather familiar:

Giant icicle

 

Remember our big icicle friend from February?

Cleared RoofBut that’s all behind us now. Joe spent a whole evening clearing off snow and even ran a heat coil across the rooftop to melt away whatever ice was left. Kinda like the thermal stripes on your rear windshield you use to defrost your car.

Yuck

Here’s what we walked into. Yuck.

Split Seam

Smack dab in the middle of the living room. Bucket catching water below.

Blowin



We dried everything before trying to fix it.

We gathered supplies: Putty, Quick Patch Ceiling Popcorn, and Kilz Paint/Primer to seal out moisture.

Puttied Celiing

First, we had to chip away the ceiling paint that got damaged.

Joe at Work

And get the surface ready for the putty fill after Kilz.

Close up PuttyThat part was fairly simple.

Seam SealedJoe is darn good with the putty knife. I’m jealous.

After that dried, we taped off the area to spackle it:

This part was kind of fun. It looked like a giant jellyfish in the sky floating around.

Joe Hanging OutWe spread a plastic sheet down and prepared to popcorn her up!

Ceiling Spray

The first can went pretty smoothly.

The second, not so much…

So we went to the store for another can, took a breather and tried again.

And we finished!

Just waiting to add a coat of white and hopefully all will be back to normal. Without needed to repaint the entire ceiling white. Fingers crossed!

Wall

But that’s not the end of the ballgame, folks. We needed to check the wall to be sure no water leaked in through the overhang/soffit outside. I checked the crawlspace under the stairs and everything was dry. Joe cut a hole in the wall with a sawzall and everything looked dry there too. Whew!

Wall holeBut now we have this ^ Beautiful.

MaskSafety first when you’ve got insulation. Itchy itchy.

Joe DrillNow that we’ve got a gaping hole in this lovely orange wall, what do we do?

Joe DrillingPut a little brace behind it and patch her up, that’s what.

tSquare

Cut a new piece of sheetrock and you move on with life I guess.

After we got that in place we patched and painted it.

Hopefully not needing another coat, since we ran out of paint!

Mug

Grateful

Whew, I think that about sums up a couple of our weekend afternoons! This could have all been a whole lot worse. We’re so lucky the wall didn’t need to be replaced. Or ceiling or roof for that matter! Has anyone dealt with a similar situation? I know a few of you have roof snow rakes. How well do those work? For future reference.

Joe and I both disliked ceiling popcorn before any of this. Now I think we dislike it even more. The orange peel ceiling texture looks interesting. Anyone tried it? Or have alternatives?

 

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