Flashing and Flooding

Kay, um, so, no.  We're not in our house yet.  I mentioned the flood we had in our house.  Ben keeps correcting me when I say "flood."  He says it's a "leak."  I tell him that leaks don't cause $10,000 in damage. 

When we turned on the main water line, the faucet in the kitchen was leaking, so we turned the valve off to that, but everything else seemed great, so we left it on.  When we came back the next night to do some cleaning, I went downstairs to make sure I had put lightbulbs in all of the fixtures (the previous owners took all of the lightbulbs with them when they left.  I literally had to replace 40 lightbulbs), the fixture in the bedroom downstairs wasn't working.  And then I heard dripping water.  I walked in, trying to find the source, and I found it.  The light fixture was dripping. 

I alerted Ben, and he undid the fixture.  It was filled with water.  Like a bathtub.  Then he felt the ceiling.  It was like a sponge.  "Kar," he said, I think we've had a leak somewhere."  He cut a line in the ceiling, and water came pouring out, like Niagara Falls.  Splash.  All over the cheesy linoleum floor. The sopping ceiling was peeling away.

We called a cleaning and restoration company, and they sent a plumber, who figured out that the problem was a broken part in the dishwasher.  They set up all of this fancy equipment to dry everything out, upstairs and down:

 This metal thing is a de-humidifier:

It took a week and a half to dry everything out.  Fans blowing for an entire 10 days.  The de-humidifier taking water out of the air and emptying it into a bucket.  It's fascinating, really.  The entire ceiling had to be torn down.  Ben took advantage of the bare ceiling to quickly install some can lights in the basement bedroom.  Part of the wall had to be torn out.  And we just found out that the linoleum on the floor is ruined, too, so we have to put some carpet in there now.  Which I'm good with.  Bedrooms should be soft.  Or, if they're hard, they should be cool hard.  Like hardwood with a big fluffy rug on it.  Amiright?

Here is the kitchen after the drying:

We found out that there are TWO subfloors, and then circa 1979 linoleum, and then laminate flooring.  Four layers in the kitchen.

The restoration dudes are over there right now, putting a new second layer of subfloor in, and then new laminate.  They're using some laminate that Ben had bought a couple of months ago.  He had wanted to replace all of the living spaces upstairs with this dark laminate, so he went ahead and tore up everything else in the living spaces upstairs so he can install it.  We can't live in the house yet anyway, so he might as well get it done while the restoration guys are doing their thing.

 We found some sa-weet cat pee stains everywhere. 

We could really smell it when Ben pulled the carpet up.  He rolled it up and put it in his truck.  It was still sitting in his truck on Sunday when we came home from our new ward, and we saw a cat in the truck bed, enjoying the pee smell and possibly contributing to it.  It was funny.

We could see where the original builders had painted the railing that lines the stairwell:

And more pee stains.

Something a little disturbing - the floor makes a little hill right here:

But it's not bouncy.  It's as solid as a rock.  And the restoration guys checked the basement and can't see any problems.  They recommended to just screw the subfloor to the joists a little bit more to flatten it out.

Our home warranty people are being super-special and not covering the cost for a new dishwasher, so we had to get a new one:

The water softener and water heater also won't work.  And our washer and dryer are gas-powered, and this house isn't hooked up to any gas - all electric.

So we've bought five appliances in the past week.  And are still haggling with the warranty insurance people.

Oh, and Ben installed new light fixtures in the kitchen:

Kay, now for flashing trauma.  When Ben pulled up the carpet in the living room, he found some rotten wood around the fireplace hearth:

Upon examination, he realized that there hadn't been any flashing installed on any of the crevices of the roof.  Like, ever.  So 34 years of weather has dripped and soaked into the wood surrounding the chimney, rotting it.  See?  No flashing:

And the rotten wood extends to the outside of the chimney, too:

So Ben put new flashing around the chimney, and now the restoration guys have to replace all of the rotten wood. Which means they have to demolish the hearth to get back there.  Which means the hearth tile will be demolished.  Which means that new tiles on the hearth won't match the tiles on the front of the fireplace.  Which means that Ben demolished all of the tiles yesterday:

Ben posted this picture on facebook yesterday, with this caption:  "Ever see that movie 'the money pit'? I loved that movie till now. It's amazing the damage an unflashed chimney can do! My only worry is that Karlenn might sleep with some guy with nasty long blonde hair."

I laughed pretty hard. :)

Otherwise, I might have cried.

So Ben's thinking he wants to do something really modern and fun there, like corrugated metal or something. 

I just want to move into my new house...

While Ben was flashing (haha, that's funny to say), I worked outside on the south side of the house.  I took that horrible black gardening paper out of one area and removed the random rocks:

I think later I'm going to use the rocks to make a little pathway.  Like in the spring.

And I planted the random bush I had found in the front yard.  I don't know what it is, but we'll see how it does in the south sun.

It has a brother that I need to plant today.

So...yeah.  Good times.  It will look fantastic when we're done, but sometimes I get so frustrated that I can't talk about it.  One day, I turned off my phone, because I was tired of talking about it.  It was just making me more and more bummed out the more people asked about it.