Like many of my jobs, this one started out as a small leak repair but inevitably became a full-blown makeover—in this case, of a covered, third-floor balcony built into the gable dormer of an old Boston-area Victorian. My clients had noticed some minor water staining on the ceiling of the living space below the balcony and wanted me to fix that problem, as well as remove a pair of fixed windows from the arched openings in the gable wall and replace them with railings. When I assessed the job, I noted that the balcony floor had been framed with no pitch and was covered with asphalt roll roofing, not a good waterproofing combination for resisting the windblown rain that would inevitably make its way through the missing panes in the broken arched windows.
