A hole in the roof

Bulletin from our house in France. It started with a drip. Which started with a pinhole in the skylight on the top floor. Which we'd never have noticed had Natalie and Ben not been sleeping there. Ah, young love: very alert to drips inside the nest.

So we called Paul Thomas, our plumber and everyman. He took to the roof in a brief interval between storm bands and spotted the flaw.

But tragedy happened: the open skylight slipped and crashed. Its custom-bent plastic pane, egg-yolk yellow, polymer chains blasted to fragility by decades of sun, split up the middle. We'd started with a pinhole. Suddenly now we had a full-blown hole to the sky, on the top floor of our house in France. And the near-term forecast promised downpours.

My limit is about three days without attentive hygiene before I start to smell in my crannies. I was at my limit and had no intention of venturing out in public. But needs must: Paul and I raced off to Bricomarche, a French DIY store in the next town. I was the wallet, he was the talent. We found a piece of thermoformable replacement plastic. For a second we considered buying a second piece, just in case something went awry. But, non: confidence reigned. Just the one piece, then. We sped off to Paul's workshop a few miles away.

Cutting the plastic went well enough. Thermoforming the plastic, using a heat gun and a couple of boards, went well enough; we needed a curved edge on two sides to fit the channels of the skylight. We'd measured amply, hoping an extra few centimeters would make a better seal. You know what? We were wrong about that. The plastic cracked as we squeezed it in, an afternoon's work a waste.

We stared at our failure for a few moments, then jumped back in Paul's van, heading for the store to buy a second piece of plastic. This time, make a story short, we didn't fracture it. And returned to install the repaired skylight a few minutes before rain started to pour. All's well that ends well. At least I got to see Paul's house-in-progress: a masterpiece domestic renovation of a former distillery in a village of 600 souls.

Comments

[Kermit Lukacs]

Moments like that suck, don't they? Trying to fix something, and then finding out that you need to go out and buy another spare - those times are just frustrating. But you're right. All's well that ends well. The hole in your roof is fixed, and that's something to be happy about.