I ignored a small damp patch for two winters
Okay so this is my parents house technically but I have the attic room which means I am basically in charge of it. The patch showed up in the corner near the window, sort of greyish, not massive. The size of maybe two hands side by side. Mum looked at it once and said it was probably just condensation and we should open the window more. Dad looked at it and said yeah probably. I painted over it with the leftover magnolia from the landing. It dried, it looked fine, I put a poster over the corner anyway because the magnolia was the wrong shade of white and it looked worse than the damp honestly.
I mean. The obvious thing is catch it early, damp gets worse, small leak plus time equals expensive disaster, fine yes. But also I genuinely believed it was fine both times I painted over it. I wasnt being lazy exactly, I was being optimistic, which might be the same thing. Not sure. The 800 pound thing does sting. But then again we had that room for 6 years before this happened and most of the time the wall was completely normal so maybe the real lesson is roofs just fail sometimes and thats.