Not too long ago (I think it was in April?) The Boswell House suffered from a second flood event.
You heard me, another one.
However - this event was much, much less serious. While we did have to call in a crew to remove the water and de-humidify (or whatever it is they do) we did not have to move out, board the dogs, or do any of that holy nightmare. What happened was that a connection to the toilet in the hallway bathroom basically fell off. Then it dumped out a bunch of water. A couple of baseboards swelled up, and a lot of the laminate floor is peely. That being said, we live in Tucson Arizona. I'm pretty sure the humidity level here is actually negative numbers. The swelling in the baseboards dried up and went back down, and that laminate floor was doomed anyway. We could have easily spilled a few beers at a rowdy party and suffered the same damage you know? OR maybe one afternoon all three dogs could have peed. OR maybe we were carrying a few pots of soup out for some reason - anyway you get where I'm going with this. That floor gets wet for ANY reason and it's wrecked so, meh. I'm not too upset about it.
One thing worthwhile did suffer though - the carpet in the master bedroom. Oh that carpet, how I loved that carpet. I shed a few tears to mourn for it, and then - we figured out what do to next.
(I'm pretty sure they're like a franchise operation)
We loved these guys at the time, and we still do today. Turns out, luckily, that the carpet I love is quite popular, so they keep it in stock! YAY! We had them over to go over a few things and see if 1. We could just relay and shampoo? Or 2. We need to replace. They gave us bids for both, and we went 50/50. Since the carpet in the guest room also got soaked - but not as bad as the master - we decided to re-lay it, and replace the master where it was pretty well de-laminated. The guys at Floor Trader didn't pressure a decision in either direction, Dylan and I decided it must be pretty wrecked because both rooms were getting lots of traffic, but only the master's carpet was literally falling apart. Decision made - we set a date.
Then, it was carpet day!
To prep for carpet day, we needed to empty out the bottom of the closet. I converted the bathtub in the master bathroom into a giant shoe receptacle. I love how amusing it looks.
We also had to clear out the majority of our furniture, Arnie thought we were doing so just for him.
Then we figured, since the carpet's about to be replaced, why not use this time to take care of another item we've been neglecting: Holes. Yep. Holes.
A much longer time ago, we had a preventative termite treatment done to the house. The company who offers said treatment promotes a pet friendly super effective concoction that they shoot directly into your walls instead of treating the ground around your home. We had started to see some termite mounds pop up in the back yard, which was what prompted the treatment. When we had the crew out for the estimate they said that we'd just have to clear under the sinks and give them access to the garage. That combined with a good recommendation from one of Dylan's coworkers we went ahead and signed on for the treatment.
Not such a great experience.
I have to say, they do not warn you in the slightest for just HOW invasive it's going to be, or how MANY holes they're going to drill. They didn't go under sinks, they went in through the walls behind any area that had plumbing. And then when they drilled on the outside of the house (like 3 inches apart around the WHOLE HOUSE) about every 6th to 8th hole blew THROUGH and popped a hole into the interior also. Awesome. So we had a bunch of these guys to deal with:
(The smaller holes above are from the nails when we had the siding redone ... cripes maybe we just have thin walls. Anyway, we cleaned these up and patched them with Spackle. (Hey look at that Spackle is a proper noun! Like Band Aid or Dumpster .... I'm getting off track here)
Patchy, patchy, patchy.
Then we painted the patches in the master bedroom.
Finally! It's honestly time for carpet now!
The crew who came out were fantastic, they were even nice to our circus of pets. That circus of course wholly approved of the new, better smelling, squishy again - glorious, fantastic carpet.
For argument's sake, here's how our bedroom was set up for a few weeks:
And, half of the padding had been yanked - so it was just flimsy carpet on top of hard concrete.
Now you can really understand just how much new, better smelling, squishy again - glorious,
fantastic carpet really is all of those happy descriptive words.
~aaaah~ yes. It's like a real bedroom again!!
If I stopped right here we could all look back at this blog post and think "Gee, that's pretty darn productive" but just you wait. We weren't done! See, the carpet was installed on the Saturday of a 3 day weekend. That left two more days to take care of some much needed business - and we actually did!
Remember a million years ago when we got that awesome bargain on paint - one of which we were going to make an accent wall in the guest room? No? Yeah, I didn't expect you to. It really was a million years ago but - guess what?! We now have an accent wall in the guest room! Besides, it had some of those holes too, so really by procrastinating we were doing our future selves a favor. Had we painted the accent wall prior to the termite treatment, we'd just be painting again. Psh. Ain't nobody got time for that!
Coming together nicely here
Viola! A guest room! With plenty of space for a couple peices of exercise equipment that may or may not have been in the garage since the dawn of time - and room for guests when we have them.
Can't beat a functioning guest room.
But wait! There's more! (I know, I'm as shocked as you are!)
We nabbed a gallon of super green paint from Walmart and finally finished the wall in Dylan's office.
Color: approved.
One more snag here though, see, there was some old damage on the ceiling from a previous smaller leak... (What? Here?! What nonsense!) So, before painting the wall - we repainted and retextured that spot overhead.
It was a good thing we did this prior to painting because holy moly you guys. Ceiling texture makes a big ol' mess. Far more of it got on me, Dylan and the floor than it did the ceiling but hey - in the end - it did what it was supposed to do, and it was hilarious listening to those globs rain back down. So, take my word for it, if you ever need to retexture your ceiling - prep for a giant mess.
Now, we paint.
We paint, we step in paint, then we do another coat. (To the wall, not our feet) And when all is said and done (and washed off) we've got one more lovely accent wall to show for all the hours of hard labor.
There you have it friends - it only took one more flood to get us to finish everything we needed to do after the first flood anyway! Gotta love bein' a Boswell.
See ya'll next time!
