After a long series of mishaps, ranging from minor to seriously annoying, Renée's mom made the observation that we don't "live in a money pit. You live in a money cavern!" Sadly, we're beginning to agree. Sit down while we catch you up.
The POD finally departed on May 14th, after 91 days in our driveway. Here's what it looked like the day before it left:
All that was left in it was Chris' old barstools which were sold on Craig's List the very next week. It's different being able to park two cars in our driveway. Sometimes Chris parks out on the street just for old time's sake! The remaining items in the POD would up in our living room, where we are slowly sorting through them. We're still in the "stuff consolidation" phase of living together.
But the real news around the house was water. In lots of water in unexpected and unwanted places. Like under the sink, in the basement, under the sunroom roof, in the sunroom, and most recently in the office closet. Let's run through them:
- Leaky disposal required a visit by the plumber. That one was a relatively easy fix. And we found a smart, honest plumber at that.
- Five inches of rain in a 24 hour period caused water to seep up through the floor of our basement. It was small puddles from the corners of the linoleum floor in several places. As soon as the rain stopped, so did the leaks. While we did have to replace the carpet pad down there, all-in-all it was certainly not as bad as it could have been!
- After consulting with our favorite roofer, John from KCSI Exterior Construction, we decided our best course of action for the sunroom roof was the replace it entirely. After John and his crew did such an excellent job on the main roof of our house back in November, it was an easy decision to invite him back. It's a good thing we did. As soon as they removed the main roof, they discovered (along with birds nests and two bats) that the sub-roof was supporting three inches of standing water! It has been a wet spring here in DC, but come on! The old roof had warped in several places, allow both water and flying creatures in. John and his crew quickly squeegeed the water off and built a new roof.
- Sadly, this was not the end of the sunroom water saga. Within two days of John wrapping up work on the roof, we noticed water stains on the paneling that makes up the ceiling of the sunroom. Almost as we watched, the stains grew bigger and bigger, some of them even merging. After some sleuthing and another couple of visits by John, we had pulled away the ceiling panels, cut into the drywall, removed the insulation and discovered several places where it looks like the water that was on top of the sub-roof had managed to squeeze in. Gravity did it's job, and soon we had water dripping from the ceiling! To make a long story short, we dried everything out, replaced what needed replacing and even found the ceiling tiles (Armstrong's Country Classic Planks). That feels like a happy ending.
But the water story is not over yet. Remember a few weeks ago we told you about the leaking hall bathroom that we discovered the hard way? Well, today we were finally making good progress on the pile of non-consolidated stuff in our living room. And since we are starting to put this away, we were placing more stuff than normal in the big closet in the office. That's when Renée (bless her shell-shocked heart) discovered what looks very much like damage from the leaking bathroom that we missed. The upper corner of the closet, the one that is right next to the ceiling where the big leak appeared, is damp and moldy. Booo!
These pictures are from tonight. As you can see, there's some serious issues going on above the ceiling in this closet! We'll be calling Steve from RARCO tomorrow to see when he can get some of his guys back out to fix this.
Needless to say, it certainly is starting to feel like the Money Cavern is a much better name for our home!
