Ervolino: I made it through the rain, but the wind was another story
Misery loves company, and my company generally enters through the front door, so that is where I am today: at my front door, on the outside looking in.
And up.
My topics today are aluminum and polycarbonate.
What I am looking up at, but not seeing, is the old aluminum awning that used to reside over my front door and is now on the ground, somewhere.
The main culprit in this drama was Winter Storm Finn, which blew through the Northeast on Jan. 9, dropped 2 to 3 inches of rain across the region, canceled or delayed several thousand flights east of the Mississippi and flooded parts of Little Falls, Wayne and Paterson.
In August, people are fond of saying, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”
Last week, I told anyone who asked, “It wasn’t the precipitation, it was the wind.”
This is not to say that my home and property weren’t saturated. They were.
But what kept me up all night was the incessant clatter. The whack-whack-whack. And the thump-thump-thump.
It sounded like something large was hitting my house. It also sounded as if my roof was ripping apart, like the one on Sissy Spacek’s house at the end of “Carrie.”
“WHAT’S HAPPENING OUT THERE???”
On a couple of occasions, while all of this was going on, I tried to go outside, get a handle on the damage and assess how many millions of dollars it was going to cost me.
But standing outdoors was out of the question. The rain was intense, and things were blowing all over the place — branches, garbage pails, Volkswagens …
I remained awake until about 3:30 a.m. and woke up, three hours later, to a text from one of my neighbors.
My phone, which was on my nightstand, made an annoying little ping, and that’s when I saw it: a beautiful photo of the front of my house, taken by my across-the-street neighbor Sergio.
The sky was bright blue, the clouds were bright white and my dull gray aluminum awning was hanging precariously over my bright red front door. The left side of the awning was still attached to the house. The right side, sadly, was not.
(Everything else, including the roof, seemed fine.)
I looked out my bedroom window and saw what was, indeed, a gorgeous morning.
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Well, except for the catastrophe below me.
And this led to my first decision of the day: Should I go downstairs and see the damage firsthand, or drag my blanket over my head and go back to sleep?
I opted for the latter, but that lasted only two minutes, before I got up, trudged downstairs, opened the front door and … there it was, bobbing in the breeze and completely blocking my view.
It was as if God had reached down and said, “Here’s your awning, Billy-Boy!”
Convinced that this was too much to deal with on three hours of sleep, I closed the door, adjourned to the kitchen, made some coffee and, in the spirit of sharing, posted Sergio’s striking photo of my ravaged house on Facebook, with a caption that read: “There’s got to be an awning after.”
Last I saw, the post generated 160 comments and 661 likes. I’m still not sure what my Facebook followers liked, though: the photo, the caption or my forlorn 5-foot wide aluminum awning, dangling precariously over my threshold like the Sword of Damocles.
Hours later, with the help of Sergio and my friend Troy, I managed to remove the awning, toss it to the ground and ponder the not-too-distant future.
We all agreed that the awning, which was most likely from the 1960s or late ‘50s was not going back up.
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The big question was what I would replace it with — assuming I was going to replace it at all.
The house looked fine without the awning, but after 25 years I had gotten used to it.
Plus, in this era of relentless doorstep deliveries and wildly unpredictable weather …
“I really think I’d prefer having an awning,” I said.
Troy recommended a polycarbonate replacement: “They’re not too expensive and they’re more modern. This one you have is from the 1960s. It ages the house.”
“The house is 134 years old,” I said.
“Yes,” he replied, “but it doesn’t look a day over 90. Ha-ha-ha.”
Grumble.
(Isn’t it charming when people laugh in the face of tragedy?)
My other possibilities were … aluminum? (Maybe). Canvas? (No.) Tempered glass? (Definitely not.) And …
How about copper? I found a cool-looking copper awning on Etsy for $1,500. Plus $199 for shipping. Plus … whatever it was going to cost to have it installed.
Ugh.
More high winds are in the forecast, and I still haven’t decided on whether to buy a new one, resurrect the old one, or …
Whatever.
I will say that if a nice one tears off someone else’s house and blows by mine, I’m grabbing it.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ stormy weather can damage homes. What to do next? - Ervolino
