As a kid I can remember staring at the ceiling in my bedroom and seeing the pale brown stains that would spread across the white paint after a heavy rainstorm. From where I law I saw faces and pictures in the coffee colored blotches that spread across the milky paint, the profile of an old man's face and the top of a crooked pine tree that seemed to grow along with the stain's expanding perimeter. At the time I didn't make the connection between the storms that tore branches from the trees outside our ranch home in Wichita and the paint that would flake from the ceiling and accumulate on the floor or the room I shared with my little brother. But certainly my parents understood the trouble water damage could cause, and they were the ones who after years of trying to deal with the problem themselves, finally made the wise decision to hire a Wichita water damage restoration expert.
Like a lot of families in our neighborhood, my parents didn't have the money to replace our entire roof, although leaks and poor insulation were probably to blame for the persistent drip of water that stained the ceilings in our bedroom and the bathroom upstairs. I remember my father climbing up a tall ladder to reach the roof and look for obvious leaks. But my father, who was the bookish type and not inclined towards home improvements, didn't realize that the leak might not be directly over the visible damage inside. When we finally got the water damage restoration expert in to take a look he told us that the water was actually running downward from a leak six feet or so from the spot we were seeing inside.
There's a lot to be learned from an expert in any field, and that kindly Wichita repairman was no different. He read the stain on our bedroom ceiling like he was deciphering a language none of us knew, explaining that the concentric moisture rings that grew lighter toward the outside meant we'd had the leak for a long time, each new ring representing a worsening of the leak, or a new leak altogether in a different part of the roof that was sending additional water down to the ceiling. Touching the spot gently with calloused hands, I watched as bits of spackle crumbled to the floor; my mother, who had hoped to stem the tides herself before finally calling in the repairman, had driven to the hardware store in Wichita and purchased a spackling knife and a bucket of the stuff. I can still see her perched at the top of that ladder in our bedroom, my brother and I giggling as we looked up her skirt while she spread the thick putty across the cracking paint, her eyes squinted as they always were when she was deep in concentration.
Now, her feet planted firmly on the ground, I watched as she sighed and signed a check for the repairs that had finally put an end to all the leaks. The repairman had used a razor blade to cut away the old paint and damaged particleboard underneath, and had spent a hot afternoon up on the roof replacing the faulty tiles with new ones that would keep the rain out of our home.
