Hurricane Sandy Left Us a Present!

We were hardly touched by the hurricane, but it did get windy and it has rained a lot the past few days, and since the hurricane goes in a counter-clockwise direction, the rain was hitting the east side of our house, which it normally does not.  Well, Tuesday late afternoon, I looked up in the kitchen and saw this upside-down hump on my ceiling!  OH NO! 

I panicked for a minute while trying to figure out what my plan of action was going to be.  My husband didn't hear me, so I had to walk through the living room to get his attention.  I ran downstairs to get the Rubbermaid dish bin that we have, grabbed a pair of scissors, stood on the chair, and punctured the hump while my H held the bin.  Well, now that the immediate threat of it exploding is over, time to figure out where it came from.  Never-mind that all the stuff on the table got wet, and my table too.  I can tell that it got damaged because where the water was it is rougher than the rest of the table when I run my hand over it.  BUMMER!  I don't know how we didn't see it sooner because it had to have been dripping long enough to soak boxes and sit on my table to ruin it.  

This originally was a nice hump until I popped it

I peeled all the loose/wet paint away

So up to the attic/crawl space we go.  (In a traditional Cape Cod style house, there really is no attic, more like storage in the eaves of the roof).  We had to pull out 2 full trunks of stuff and a few more boxes.  Did a little hunting around, trying to get our bearings and figure out where we should be looking in relation to the kitchen.  Well we found some wet insulation, but not really a clear source of the water.  We decide to go outside because the spot that it happened was about 1 foot from our window, dead center.

We get out the ladder and H gets up on the roof of the carport, the window looks good and sealed, the carport doesn't go 'into' the house, just butted up against it, but the flashing was loose (rusty nails lifted a bit), well just at the corner of the carport there was a hole.  DAMN YOU SANDY!  However, it is a bit of a relief though that it happened, because the rain does not drive sideways into that side of the house during any other rain due to the direction of the house/general weather paths.

For reference of what the next picture is, carport meets house over window

Hard to see because I wasn't on the ladder, but where the siding is cut and the carport meets it, there is a hole!

So with the rain subsiding, no more water should be coming in, but I do need it to stay dry for a day so that I can caulk the hole so this doesn't happen again.  I did scrape and peel off the paint that was wet, anything that peeled easily really.  I had a little table fan as well and I sat that on the table and pointed it straight up at the ceiling to dry it out, can't have mold starting to grow!

Once everything is all good and we are sure it won't be an issue anymore, I need to get out my drywall tools, put a coat of mud up and sand it down.  Then repaint the ceiling.

Did I mention that I am having Thanksgiving dinner in my house in 3 weeks?