Home Ownership

There are worse things that could happen to your feet than having cold water squish up between your toes whilst walking across the carpet in your two-year-old's room at 6:30 in the morning. Stubbing your toe on the corner of the dresser in the middle of the night with a glass of juice in your hand, for one, is pretty bad, or getting up off the couch only to step in what you're praying is milk-soaked Raisin Bran that has somehow been spilled on your new living room rug by a careless child, that's a bad one. The cold water thing is up there on the discomfort scale though, and that's what I've been dealing with, consistently, for a month. The other stuff has happened too, but not every day.

At first I thought there was water getting in from outside, so after inspecting the outside of the house on my hands and knees I found a few potential culprits and got a can of that silicone foam stuff that gets about 500 times it's original size as it dries. I didn't know that when I was filling holes though and now have giant yellow foam stalagmites all over the outside of my house.

Apparently what I did was fill every hole that was allowing the water to drain because about the time the foam was dry Story's room became a humid marshland. As I was walking down the hallway, discouraged, I felt water coming up between the slats of laminate flooring and finally realized that the water was coming from the air conditioner, which is in a tiny closet off the hallway. Now that I think about it I'm pretty sure I remember hearing dripping sounds when the air was on. I feel like a fool.

I tried to fix it myself, reasoning that it was condensation from a cold copper pipe, which I lovingling bundled with towels and then shop-vac-ed Story's carpet all prepared for it to dry thouroughly. That didn't work either and after putting pie tins and buckets to catch the now steady stream of water (it could still be condensation, it's really humid here) flowing from the cold pipe, I caved and called a plumber, or electrician, I don't know what he was. Not a plumber, I guess, when I asked him if he could fix the garbage disposal he said I had to call a plumber. I thought guys who had names on their shirts knew how to fix anything, I'd have had the guy look at my car which is slow to start these days if I had been home. He acted like the air conditioner should be a quick fix though, unknowingly insulting my efforts over the past month.

So, after a month of sloshing around and trying to fix it myself, it's finally running right. Now I've just got to figure out how to fix the carpet, the laminate floor, and the foam pillars outside.