Man, owning a home gives you a completely different sense of things than NOT owning a home does. I have never, EVER been to Lowe's Hardware in my life as much as I have been over the last month... and the scary part is I now LIKE going to Lowe's. I have no idea how my priorities shifted that much.
Oh, wait, I totally do know how that happened, and it rhymes with "one-hundred thousand shmollars."
It's not all roses and putty, though. Some of the things I've had to deal with since moving in are a little more stressful... specifically, a chronically wet basement. Now, I moved right before the rainy season, and I knew going into this thing that the basement was going to be a problem. I also knew that I needed to get some gutters installed on the north side of the building ASAP, as there are a lot of drainage issues up there that could potentially cause some flooding.
I figured I hadn't acted quickly enough when a puddle appeared in my basement within a week of me moving in. Now, Momma Bradford didn't raise no fool, so I took immediate steps to get the issue resolved. Meaning, of course, that I permanently relocated my two grossest towels to the basement to serve on mop-up patrol.
Oh, and I guess I called some guys to get the gutters installed ASAP.
So we're about two weeks into the waiting on the gutters thing, with me going downstairs to clean up as much of the water as I can, when it hits me: We haven't really had that much rain recently - definitely not enough to justify how damp it's gotten downstairs. So I wake up one morning, rush downstairs, and check on the ground. Dry as a bone. Puzzles, I go upstairs, take my shower, and get ready for work. Just before I leave, though, I decide to check on the basement again.
BAM! Puddle City.
Turns out it's not all bad news. The leak, it seems, is somewhere between the tub's faucet and the shower head. That means that I can't shower, but I can take a bath. Yup, I can certainly bathe all six feet of me in a four-foot tub... Provided, of course, that I tape the drain over first, since the stopper in the tub doesn't work. But it's either that or smell funny until I can get the plumber in.
So, yeah... Leaky shower, not leaky foundation. On the one hand, it's a relief. The gutters would have been a nice solution to the drainage issues around the house, but there is no way I could guarantee that they'd fix it entirely. Now that I know where the problem is, I know exactly how to fix it, and then it'll be fixed for (mostly) good.
On the other hand, "fixing" the leak is going to require tearing down a whole wall. But I guess you can't make an omelette without tearing about your house.
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