The installers from Carpet One must have thought I was crazy when I kept thanking them, tears in my eyes. It was a just a job to them, but in four hours, these burly guys removed all the furniture left in my den, took out the old nail strips and put in new ones, laid down padding and installed the new carpet. After which they vacuumed it and put my furniture back. My dog, banished through the whole process, was ticked off, but I couldn’t believe how beautiful the new carpet looked, much prettier than the dirty old Berber and of course better than the stained concrete I’d been living with since August.
Category: water damage
My Flood Disaster is Almost Over–I Hope
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Bookshelves in progress, accompanied by a “Sex and the City” marathon. |
I now have new respect and sympathy for people whose entire houses get flooded by hurricanes, overflowing rivers, tsunamis, burst dams or whatever. I only had one room get soaked, and it has taken almost two months to begin to recover. I never saw this coming.
I woke up on Aug. 20 to discover water all over my laundry room. My 12-year-old water heater had died in the night, and water was pouring out the bottom. Phooey. But the laundry room, formerly part of the garage, was never completely finished. Once I mopped the water off the concrete floor and got a new water heater, I figured my troubles were over.
But no. The next night, I was on the phone with a friend when I happened to walk barefoot through my den, also formerly part of the garage. The carpet was soaked. Major curse words flew out of my mouth. I have already blogged about the details of all this ad nauseum. The short version: I spent a day trying to sop up the water with minimal success as the stench of wet carpet padding, wood and sheetrock permeated the house. The next day, I followed my father’s advice and called the insurance company. Water damage workers tried to dry things out, then removed my entire carpet and my four six-foot tall bookshelves. They also chopped a soggy section out of my wall. Over the weeks that followed, I had many visits from various professionals, interspersed with long periods of waiting.
Everything from that room, including hundreds of books, all of my clothes and a host of photos and knick-knacks, is spread through the rest of the house. But now it’s almost over. The wall is patched and painted, I finished putting together the last bookshelf last night, and the carpet is due to be installed on Wednesday. Emerald cut, rust-colored Spanish tile instead of the silly white Berber that used to be there. It will all turn out to be an expensive blessing, I’m sure.
Having been surrounded by my possessions all this time, I’m not so fond of them anymore. And I realize that when the flood hits, everything that gets wet becomes worthless. I will reconsider every item that I put back in that room. Do I really need so much stuff? Don’t answer that. I know what you’ll say.
Meanwhile, yesterday I noticed the roof is leaking in the laundry room. Just a little.
To Build a Bookshelf
When is a Garage Not a Garage?
What is a garage? In modern American houses, it’s supposed to be a place to store the car, although in many homes it’s too full of other stuff for the car ever to fit inside. Tools, Christmas decorations, washer and drier, suitcases, garden equipment, stuff you plan to give to charity someday, and stuff you just plain don’t know what to do with live in the garage. At my house, it’s also where I store: pellets for the pellet stove and kindling for the wood stove, a spare tire, tire chains I have never used but must carry in the winter, my husband’s old bike that he never used, two dollies, three ladders, an umbrella for the patio table that fell apart ages ago, a Shop Vac, an American flag hanging above a Christmas tree stand, a few dozen empty boxes, two bags of Styrofoam “popcorn,” a file cabinet that didn’t fit in the house, and a nearly lifesize image of my late husband signed by all the folks at one of his many retirement parties. We call it Styrofoam Fred. But yes, I do get the car in. Thank God it’s small.
If it’s not wet, it’s frozen
Annie and I have a bedtime ritual. I turn off the TV, empty the water out of the dehumidier in the den and turn it on. That machine that we bought secondhand many years ago sucks up about a gallon of water a day in the rainy season from a room that appears to be dry–but it’s not. Our den used to be the garage. It’s damp and usually about 60 degrees. Mold appears on things in the closet, and giant water stains mar the beige carpet.
Moisture is a constant problem here. I was sorting through old newspapers and magazines on Saturday and found a box containing my very first publications. I found poems, short stories and articles from the early 1970s, as well as articles I wrote for various publications, including the San Jose Mercury News, Bay Area Parent, Bay Area Homestyle, South Valley News, Corporate Times, the Advocate Journal and others. There were my early prizewinning poems, the article I wrote about San Jose State University when I was a student, my treatise on bees for Family Motor Coaching. A whole history of a career lay in that box, but a lot of it was so moisture-damaged from years in a coastal storage locker and then another year in my garage that I had to throw it away. I set aside the most precious things to be scanned into the computer. Then I went to Staples and bought some plastic bins for future storage.
The moisture is good for our skin, and it’s good for ferns and rhododendrons, but not so great for paper.
We haven’t had any rain for several days now. Instead we’re into an icy period, with the temperature in the 30s during the day and the 20s at night. If we had precipitation, it would be snow, but instead everything is coated with ice. So the other night, I turned on the dehumidifier, took my bedtime pill, brushed my teeth and then led Annie outside to make her final potty stop. She has a doggie door but rarely goes outside without me.
Her first stop is always the water bowl. This time, she put her tongue down and hit solid ice. I laughed at the look of total confusion on her face. I got her inside bowl and offered her liquid water, but no, she had to drink out of the outside bowl. She licked at the ice, pushed it around with her nose and finally found some water underneath.
After her drink, she skidded across the pavement and crunched across the frozen lawn to squat and melt some of the ice. Unlike most nights, she did not take time to sniff the air or run after phantom invaders. Too cold! She ran back inside and waited for her two Milkbones. If I just give her one, she’ll stare at me until I give her another. I kissed her goodnight, and we retired to our respective beds, mine in my bedroom and hers by the pellet stove which would be coming on and going off all night, lighting the room with an orange glow. By morning, the bin would be empty, and Annie would be curled up tight against the cold. I’d get another bag of pellets and start fighting our daily battle against the cold again. I just bought another 18 40-pound bags, half of them still in the car.
Nobody told us it would get this cold when we moved to the Oregon coast. And yet, when I look out the window at our bright blue sky without a hint of smog, when I step outside into the icy cold at night and see the stars so bright I could touch them, when I look at the trees and the ocean and the boats in the bay, I can’t believe how beautiful it is here. So I’ll buy plastic bins to protect my possessions and lots of pellets to keep me and Annie warm. Only a fool would complain.