First Leak

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We have a 30 yr old Velux skylight in the kitchen. For many years its been fine but with this winter's snow, rain, ice, icy rain, warm, cold, too warm, too cold, we got a leak the other day. Had water dripping through the dry wall ceiling. To facilitate the water out of the ceiling, which wasn't a lot really, I poked through an awl and got the pooled water out from the top side of the dry wall ceiling. Went up in my ranch attic and got rid of a fairly small amount of wet insulation.

I got 2 questions: first, the dry wall is a bit saggy from being soaked, essentially between two 16"OC strapping pieces. So to get the dry wall back to the 1 x 3's I put a board with a piece of plywood on the ceiling to force it back up. Moved OK with no damage, The weight of the wet sheet rock pulled out 1 or 2 screws, that is how far it drooped. But I was able to push it back up to the strapping. I did not want to try to screw it while wet. Good news is the ceiling is OK, for now anyway while I wait for it to dry out. So the question is if I am patient and the dry wall dries out, will it stay if I reattach it? The ceiling has a light texture so if I can get away with a couple of screws that repair won't be bad. Anybody got experience with such an issue?

Second, the skylight. We had a decent day yesterday and after I was able to get the ice off the roof, I checked out the sky light and can't see any obvious issues. But in the spirit of not wanting a kitchen ceiling shower, I gunked the edges for now at least to try to prevent any leaks for the rest of the winter. Does anyone have experience with Velux flashing? This was done with the original factory kit and it still looks good. I am thinking I just had some bad luck with melting and ice dams with the heat from the skylight, this would be a first but we have had some big temps swings. The roof is cold with 12 inches of on the ceiling insulation and a cold attic but there is always some melting around the skylight. Any similar experiences? Sorry for the tome.....
 
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Well, here it is a few weeks later. I figured I'd sum up what happened so far. The leak, which I am now convinced was an ice dam under some very unusual conditions, I think is fixed. So I ended up with a sheet rock ceiling soaked. The inside finish is Dacor Rough Wall....long since discontinued but really good stuff. Really tough surface. And then few coats of ceiling paint from over the years. The drywall board was so soaked for about a 16" square it pulled off the strapping where it was screwed in 3 or 4 places. I went in the attic and got rid of a small amount of soaked insulation and pulled the rest up to air dry, which it did. In the kitchen, I put a brace with a flat piece of plywood to push the drooping drywall back up onto the strapping. After a week or two it dried out and hard/solid again. One unexpeccted problem though. The coatings on the sheetrock apparently were well stuck to the paper facing on the drywall, pulled away from the base. To fix that (this afternoon's project) I used some hypodermic type needle pokes to inject white glue into the areas wheere the coating had disconnected. Seems like its working well. A bit of touch up paint on the ceiling and I think I dodged a bigger ceiling fix that seems like its gonna look good.
 

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