Some Time To...

Nothing like a mental hiatus to make you wish you could take a real hiatus. Over the last week or so I've been doing as little as the world will allow, which is a lot more then I would like to be doing. Due to some situational situation-ness I had a wonderful 6 days off, just me and the animals. It seemed like a great time to catch up on some personal tasks I wanted to do and maybe finish the book I started reading about 6 months ago, didn't happen (well partly).

Last Friday I was talking on the phone to the folks when the panicked voice of K came from the kitchen saying that there was something I should see. So I said a quick goodbye and went to take a look. And there, above the stove, dangling from the ceiling was a giant bubble of paint. Yes, the kind of bubble you get when there is a rather large water leek in the ceiling above. After uttering about 30 to 100 rather course words we scrambled for a bucket and placed it under and gave it a poke.

I'd say about a gallon or 3 came gushing out, nice, brown, slightly off smelling water. As well as about a square foot of drywall.

Due to the excessive amount of foul language that was used at this point I think I should move on with the story.

After dropping K off at the airport on Saturday I was off to the hardware store for, well at this point I was only guessing would be a long list of things that are needed to fix gaping holes in drywall. I was right, putty knives, joint compound, joint tape, sandpaper, sand screens, oh and not to mention drywall. Since my original plan for this mini vacation was repainting the living room I picked up some paint too.

To make a long, involved, aggravating story that is filled with swears and the realization that I am about as good at drywall repair as a drunken 9 year old, the ceiling looks like a drunken 9 year old tried to fix it and we will need to hire a professional to fix it in the future when we can afford it.

I say when we could afford it because I omitted a portion of this story. You see after draining the bubble and cleaning up all of the mess that came with it, we realized that there was no more water coming down. This was good but odd news. Where had this water come from and why had it stopped? So I want on up stairs to see what could be seen in the bathroom (which is above the kitchen), nothing. No toilet overflow, no shower leek which I had been hoping for.

WHERE THE HELL DID THIS WATER COME FROM!

So a plumber was called and thank the lord he could come today.

After close inspection it was determined that the leek WAS from our incorrectly installed toilet (and yes it was post flush water... yum) and it would have to be removed to be fixed. It was also brought to our attention that the reason that our toilet was flushing so poorly prior to this is that it was no good, something about build up of calcium making the pipes about half the size they needed to be. The fix? New toilet, new gaskets and a through cleaning of rust from the fittings. The price? About 900 duckets.

Thank you O' prior owner who thought you were the handiest handy man to grace this earth. The list of crap you have screwed us on by not knowing what you are doing is growing at a geometric rate! Form the pipes filled with grout in the basement floor that will have to be jack hammered out to the incredibly bad "finished" basement construction. From the jimmied electrical systems that have outlets housed OUTSIDE of the baseboard to the paint you splattered all over the floor (conveniently covered with rugs and furniture when we looked at the place). And now this incorrectly installed toilet...

I'm not saying that the house is bad or a lemon, but there are a few things that are really just killing me.

Plumbing will put me in an early grave.

On the up side, I managed to trim out the living room and paint it a wonderful earthy gray with white trim and one red wall. Of course I've stayed up till 2am every day for the last week working, trying to complete this project before Saturday when K returns. I now have just one stretch of trim to finish painting and one more coat of red to apply for this FIRST room to be done. Then? Then on to the rest of the house....


Who needs a drink.......


Cheers