John W. wrote:So, here's the latest for me. Leaky roof. Just around the chimney. We hired a guy to patch it up, he put tar up there to seal it up (which I had already tried, I gotta stop being such a wuss and just deal with getting up on that goddamn roof more often myself - but I fuckin hate it up there). He also plugged up an area in the corner of a dormer right next to the chimney where he thought the leak was coming through, but to no avail. Night before last the rain was dripping right through again. Any ideas? Do I have to replace all the flashing around the chimney? Dude charged us $200, said he would guarantee the work he did and to let him know if it was still leaking. I called him night before last and haven't heard back yet.Sorry this is so wordy, just had morning coffee and am buzzing a bit. It all depends on how it was flashed and what shape the flashing/roof is in. are there strips of lead coming out of the mortar between bricks, running onto the roof? this was a pretty common way to do it back in the day and not the best way to go but ok. i have seen zink used and it can fail after a while. a full copper or lead coated copper pan is really the best. fixing a roof/flashing issues are pretty easy to deal with yet i am always amazed at how wrong most people do it. i have re-shingled a lot of houses where the flashing was just installed so wrong. the best advice i have is think like water. look at it and think where the water would go. blobbing a bunch of tar can fix stuff for a while but really doesn't address the underlying problem. of course if money is tight it can buy you a few years until you can fix it properly. if you can take some pics of the area i might be able to suggest a course of action.

I would also bet on the flashing, it needs to send the water off the roof not into the house. If it's not positioned correctly it leaks water.

Thanks guys - good luck with the old house there Ty. Johnny13: I do have that book and will check it out this afternoon (our realtor gave it to us as a house-warming gift). I do have access underneath the roof, it's definitely dripping down right next to the chimney and running down the rafters.

Thanks guys. Thing is the prior owners just put in a new roof in 2006, so I'm thinking something better just has to be done around the chimney. I'm going to take another look at it and will see if I can't get some pictures up here tomorrow.

I'm sure there are others out there that bought the farm and are strapped into mortgages or whatever. My wife and I bought a fixer upper here in Kentucky a couple years back (I have family in Cincinnati and my wife has family in Indianapolis - so we sort of threw a dart in the middle on a map and chose the Louisville area for the big move). After renting apartments in Chicago for almost 20 years, I know virtually nothing about being handy. Anyway, I'm trying to learn how to do stuff on my own and it would be hilarious if I wasn't the one making 10 trips to the hardware store, spending entire days trying to figure out how to do one little thing. So, I thought this might be a good place to talk about fixing things around the house.So, here's the latest for me. Leaky roof. Just around the chimney. We hired a guy to patch it up, he put tar up there to seal it up (which I had already tried, I gotta stop being such a wuss and just deal with getting up on that goddamn roof more often myself - but I fuckin hate it up there). He also plugged up an area in the corner of a dormer right next to the chimney where he thought the leak was coming through, but to no avail. Night before last the rain was dripping right through again. Any ideas? Do I have to replace all the flashing around the chimney? Dude charged us $200, said he would guarantee the work he did and to let him know if it was still leaking. I called him night before last and haven't heard back yet.Sorry this is so wordy, just had morning coffee and am buzzing a bit.

Do you have direct access to the underside of the roof? Water can travel in weird ways, and the source is not always right where you see the leak. You may need new flashing, but slapping a lot of tar up there does a lot of good even if you do need replacement. If it is not helping, maybe you need to look around more.Reader's Digest has a big home repair book that I have been using as my bible for the last 20 years. Check out The New Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual. It is well illustrated, and covers most everything you might encounter.

depending on how old your roof is, I might reccomend just getting a new roof, if you can afford it. The contractor should offer a warranty. the problem is likely flashing. step flashing around chimneys is one of the things that roofers screw up a lot. you could also have some issues with the brick. the right way to tie flashing into the brick chimney is to cut a reglet into the brick, tuck some flashing in there (copper or aluminum) and then caulk the shit out of it with heavy duty roofers cement. you gotta re-caulk it about every 5 years. roofs are important. don't mess with roofs. it could be leaking in areas that are not apparent from the inside. water and wood are not good together.I have owned 3 houses. two of them, I put a new roof on within 2 years of buying. the other one (a flat sprayed-on foam roof) I constantly worried about it, and I had to go up there every year and patch holes that birds had pecked in the coating. New roofs are cheap peace of mind.

This is a timely thread. I'm pretty much in the same boat. Lifelong renter and virtually no handyman skills, and we're working on buying an 85-year old house right now.But I've had enough home inspections and visits to know that you probablyshould replace/repair the flashing around the chimney. I've had two different inspectors tell me that's a major point of ingress for water/moisture if the flashing's not tight.

buzzsaw wrote:Drywalling is not rocket science. It is technique. ...and patience.buzzsaw wrote:Tile is so easy that i cannot believe that people pay big bucks to have it done. Unless time is an issue......The ex-Lego kid in me loves the cutting of the tile and the placement of the tile, but I would sooner slit my wrists than ever have to do all the grout-related tasks again.

2nd Rick wrote:Holmes on Homes.dude is a fuckin' badass. I love watching his show.