Woman vs. leaky mobile home roof

Several weeks ago I noticed a leak in the living room ceiling. It started out small and I mentioned it to three or four different men at church. Unfortunately, everybody is trying to find time to tend to their own lives right now and nobody offered to help fix it.

It had been raining at least every other day this summer and the pop-up storms have been harsh. By a couple of weeks later, the leak was really large, and water started streaming into the house. At this point, one man said he would help fix it whenever he got done doing everything he had to do at his own place... well, you know how that goes. By the next Saturday, it couldn't wait any longer, or I feared the whole ceiling was going to come down.

Trying to seal a leak in the roof.

So I borrowed a ladder and set out to try and fix the roof myself. Unfortunately, neither I nor the son of the man I borrowed the ladder from could get the thing to go higher, so the very top of the ladder was still a couple of feet shy of the roof. This meant I had stand the ladder almost straight up, stand on the very top rung, and hoist myself onto the roof. I was scared to death, and the metal roof is not very sturdy at all. It kept denting in and giving beneath my weight, so I ended up laying on my stomach and stretching as far as possible to get to where I thought the leak was located. The temperature was in the 90s that day, and the metal was hot, hot, hot.

Coming down from the roof was the scariest thing of all. Since the ladder didn't come all the way up I had to dangle off the roof while screaming in terror for my son to reach up and guide my feet to the ladder. Why is coming down always way scarier than going up?

Trying to slide off the roof onto the ladder. Yes, I know the siding is filthy, but hey, the home was a free gift from God. Hiring someone to power wash it (I don't own a power washer) and then painting it myself is on my list of things to do.

Could I have made my 16-year-old son do this? Probably. But it was dangerous enough and he is very afraid of heights and so never wants to get on even the sturdiest of roofs. He gladly held the ladder and handed things up to me without compliant since he didn't actually have to go on the roof, though.

The bad news is that, apparently, I didn't get it fixed well enough, as the roof continued to leak. The good news is, the man I borrowed the ladder from came and extended it for me so that this weekend when I had to go up there alone to try to fix the roof once again, the height and angle of the ladder was correct. We'll have to wait until the next rain (which should come in a day or two) to see if I fixed it correctly this time.

The one bright spot to all this? I loved the view from the top of the roof. Nothing but blue skies, puffy, white clouds, and treetops!