I tend to liken old houses to wooden ships.  One of the basic principles of survival is to keep the water out.  Actually, if you simply invert a boat’s wood hull, you have a structure not unlike some houses.  Indeed there are a few examples out there, on the northeast coast and along the St Lawrence/Great Lakes,* of building built by shipwrights, sometimes incorporating bits and pieces of boats into them.

In any event, leaks will develop.  This one is a minor one, in comparison to last year’s epic ice dams.**  An attic window, easily reached for once from a porch.  I am not in the least surprised; the roof isn’t a century old, but I bet the flashing is.  In any event, our friendly carpenter, who is a craftsman in the finest sense of the word, will come past and deal with it.  Another basic principle: develop a network of people who know how to work on the building and whom you can trust.

*I am sure there are others, I vaguely recall some in Scotland and Scandinavia.  Oddly, all the ones I can think of are churches, make of that what you will.

**There is absolutely nothing you can do with three feet of snow, frozen gutters, and a roof that is forty feet from the ground and inaccessible without scaffolding….except watch the water stain spread across the ceiling.  Until the summer, at which point you promptly repair the heretofore unknown leak.