Proof that I still live

[air_n_darkness]

Meh, it's been a hell of a week/end. Not gonna post too long, too busy, too tired.

M:TG Regionals was not so good for us. Nothing like losing 2K in one day because WOTC's scheduling SUCKS! Ah well, the event ran well, at least. But then, we ALWAYS put on a good event. That's about all I can say or the WOTC legal monkey's will come down on my head.

House is coming along, and we should be sleeping there by the weekend. Yeah!!

Bought a Dyson Animal&trade, a vac I've had my eye on for awhile now. With 4 cats, ya need a good vaccum. Also picked up my new office chair (finally!!) and desk. Now that I have a chair w/ good back support and a desk that's the proper height, spending 8-10 hours a day doing the ebay thing will (hopefully) not end in a Flexeril/Lortab combo quite as often.

We pulled up the carpet in the downstairs "bedroom" because that will be the official "home office" for the business. I have a tendancy to organize things so that I can just roll my chair from place to place, which means carpet=bad. Gonna go with painted concrete for now. Later, we'll probably go for hardwood. I have a great idea for a really mod, geometric theme, in blacks and grays, a deep red accent...

Anyways, so we pull up the carpet and we can smell a little mildew. Eh, not suprising. A few years back Pamela had trouble w/ the front porch flooding. Pull back the pad and Voila! The concrete is COVERED in dry mold, what looks like the nasty, Black Mold of Death&trade . You would never have guessed this from the carpet condition, and until we peeled back the carpet, we couldn't smell anything.

Oh, and it's almost 10pm when we find this crap.

So we used the "Super-Vac" to get up the "dust", while holding cloths over our face of course; we were afraid to leave it overnight for fear too much would get sucked up into the vents, get moist, and spore again. draconisferret poured bleach on the floor and we let it set overnight.

So I spent today wearing one of those hot, uncomfortable masks, re-bleaching the floor (KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT!!!!), and prying up carpet strips that were practically rotten. Sooooooo much fun.

The plus is that neither the sheetrock nor the insulation around the vents appears to have mold in it. We're probably gonna take down a small sheetrock panel under the windows (where the water came in) and give it a better check. Of course, we also have to patch the concrete, because pulling up the carpet nails left some bad holes.

And tomorrow, I get to go scrape popcorn off the ceiling! Joy!

I know, I know...welcome to the joys of homeownership. I'm still happy, really I am. Just tired.

Now I think I'll do what the Good Doctor said and go to my room. 'night y'all.

Comments

*shudder*

[jamethiel]

As someone with a microbiology degree, I can say that wearing the mask is good. That mould is probably aspergillus niger and can actually do nasty things to your lungs.

Bleach the hell out of it and kill it all I say!!!!

So you going to be living there while you renovate? As a word to the wise, make sure you always have at least 1 bathroom. *shudder* Renovating...

Re: *shudder*

[air_n_darkness]

We're taking the rooms one at a time. The office will actually be easy, once we fix the concrete, since it's just painting and such.

We have a "master list " of what we'd like to do over the next few years, and it's all prioritized out. We'll save money for a room, then do that room. baby steps and all that.

I'm just glad we caught the mold issue now, instead of my using the room for a year and THEN discovering it.

Re: *shudder*

[air_n_darkness]

Oh, and it's a 3 bathroom house, so there's always a potty handy:)!

[metafrantic.livejournal.com]

I hope the previous owner disclosed about this stuff before they sold it to you...

Home ownership is a pain. Nothing like having the air conditioning go out two years in a row. In summer. In Arizona. And the second time it was the Compressor that was bad - IOW, the single most expensive part. Don't you just love $1200 expenses out of nowhere?

Of course, it's worth it in the long run, and it's comforting to have a place that's yours. But still...sometimes you want to grab the house by the metaphorical neck and squeeze.

[air_n_darkness]

We knew about the porch flooding issue; I can remember when that was happening and it was 4 years or so ago.

That room was used by them as a spare bedroom/storage room, IOW it didn't get a lot of use. The carpet looked perfectly fine, just old, and the house inspector didn't find anything that indicated a problem.

Technically, we bought the house as is; that's how we got the better price. But she did have the roof fixed and a couple other things before we took possesion. The A/C unit will need to be replaced in the next two years, but we knew that going in. But the plumbing company my hubby runs has a heating and air division, so at least we don't have to seat that too much.

[metafrantic.livejournal.com]

But the plumbing company my hubby runs has a heating and air division, so at least we don't have to seat that too much

That's convenient! Plumbing and heating/air are hella expensive, too.

Three bathrooms? How big is this place?!

[air_n_darkness]

5BR, 3B, living room, dining room, den, big kitchen w/ breakfast nook, laundry room, garage. It's a 2-story.

1 bedroom is becoming the work office; the dining room will be a game room, 'cause we don't do formal entertaining all that much. The den will be my art/craft room; it's already set up with shelving for that, since that's what the previous owner used it for. One bedroom will be a "spare"; one will be the personal office, and the last BR, we're renting out to a friend who wnats to better her situation. It's more of an apartment, almost the size of the master bedroom, and she can hide away from everyone if she needs to.

I wanna say it is like 2600 sq ft of heated space, not counting the garage. Bought for 156K, appraised for almost 169k. Nothing like built in equity.

At some point, once things settle down, I will post pics.

[metafrantic.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, nice buy! that's frickin' huge! Our place in AZ was only about 1850 sq ft and we paid 164k for it! Of course, only 2 years later we sold it for 215k, and we didn't do renovations (well we put in a new garage door, but that was only because the old one broke).