Monday, January 18, 2010

RAIN. Not rain. RAIN.

Monday: rain
Tuesday: rain
Wednesday: rain
Thursday: rain
Friday: rain

Monday: rain
Tuesday: rain
Wednesday: rain
...

I'll spare you the saga about how we woke up this morning to pouring rain. Ran to the house to check the water levels in various buckets about the house. I won't tell you how our new drywall in the utility room began to stain from a new leak, or how E cut a large infant sized hole into the ceiling of the utility room to find the source of the leak, not having any luck climbing into the attic. I won't include the bit about running to the neighbors again to borrow stacks of towels to lay down in the master bedroom windows and doors to prevent a small pond from forming. I will tell you that I am more than anxious for our plumber to finish poking holes in the roof so that we can get the roofer out here.

My in-laws came by again this past weekend to help out. My father-in-law helped run wires in the wall to update the electrical. Those two came up with some pretty ingenious ways of avoiding cutting into the plaster. My personal favorite was how E went about re-routing new wire in the wall for the dining room light switch. It started out by tying a bolt to a long piece of thin rope, then E climbed into the attic, army crawl style on his stomach, then attempted to thread the bolt on a string through a hole the diameter of my middle finger near the switch box from 6' above. It worked, three times. After the first success, E came to a sad conclusion that having chosen the smaller of two holes above to begin the process, he could not thread the three pieces of wire through it. So he had to test his coordination and fine motor skills once again by starting all over though the larger of the two holes. Then as luck would have it, the whole thing came sliding down through the wall. An hour later, success.

While de-popcorning the small bedroom I came to fully understand the enormity of a seemingly small situation. It goes something like this: One evening while socializing with our new next door neighbors, we learn that the attic access in the bedroom wasn't all it appeared to be. In fact, the "attic access" came to be mid sale of the house. Upon entering the first open house, our neighbor was aghast that the home would be on the market with a gaping hole in the ceiling. The second open house the same neighbor was even more distraught to see that the hole was disguised to look like an access door to the attic. The hole wasn't fixed but cheaply disguised in gaudy makeup and fake pearls.

The poor dupes that purchased the house went about their business and decided to try and remove the door from the attic access while taking down the popcorn ceiling in the room. Much to my mother-in-law's horror, the 2'x2' piece of plywood along with several sticks of trim, a few chunks of plaster and a bit of lathe and a lot of dust came pouring down. We have a hole. Not a big hole in the sense that we could put an attic access if we wanted to, but a hole that consists of 3'x3' of missing plaster with a surrounding area of roughly the whole ceiling threatening to come down as well. Good news. The popcorn ceiling in the small bedroom is no more. The bad news, the ceiling is pretty much no more as well.

The electrical work is moving along swimmingly. All of the outlet boxes are in and the lights are ready for wiring. The plumber only has several days left of work. Tomorrow E and I take turns digging trench for our new water main and the plumber will install our tankless water heater. Onward.


1 comment:

  1. You may need a roof and windows before you put in your new walls. Sorry about the ceiling, but you are almost done with the popcorn removal. yah.

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