Monday, May 24, 2010

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.

4 comments:

  1. Giant yellow foam stalagmites - awesome.
    Well, the whole situation really is awesome.

    I was thinking how nice it is to know what's going on with you. I suddenly felt like I'm not holding up my weight in our friendship . . . but I'm not much of a writer.

    You have a talent ~ thanks for sharing it and yourself.

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  2. OH and I'm sorry for your frustrations! I get all caught up in your humor.
    So you're gonna scrape out the foam, right? Maybe just the scrape off the protrusions and go over the flat surface with gray paint?
    Probably gotta replace the carpet and linoleum, eh? :(

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  3. Not linoleum, laminate - that fake wood stuff that will probably turn to powder now that it's gotten wet, and no, we'll not be replacing it just living with it.

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  4. Annie, I don't remember how I discovered your blog, but I can honestly say that I look forward to every new post. You are a superb writer. My dad follows it as well, and shares it with mom. The three of us chuckle over your escapades when we talk. That is, we chuckle except when you're out doing scary things, like census work. Glad that's over. Anyhow, just want you to know you've had at least one lurker on here, loving every word you share.

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