Happy Birthday Sarah!

Yeah. 

Woke up this morning, had coffee and went to take a look at the house.  You know, the sound of water dripping in an unoccupied house is particularly disconcerting.  Terrifying in fact. It makes you move fast.  I ran inside.

There shouldn't be a window reflection there...ever.

A water fountain appeared to be erupting from the floor.  I saw the problem. 

The unintentional fountain in question.

For some reason, after holding for two weeks or so, the glue decided to give way and send ten gallons a minute into what will be Max's bedroom. I pushed the end of the tubing out of a conveniently placed hole in the wall and took off.

I ran outside.  Sarah was sitting outside talking on the phone to her brother, it is her birthday after all, and I ran past to the well house to shut off the water.

That's where I discovered the door was closed to the well house. 

And the outside knob looks like this.

Note to self: Replace well house doorknob.

  Yeah, I didn't even know where to try to turn.  It wouldn't open. At least the water wasn't pouring into the house anymore...probably.

I ran back to the house and past Sarah, and grabbed my tool bag. I got pliers and ran back to battle the well house door.  It gave way pretty quickly and I shut off the water.  As I trotted back to the house, I told Sarah the house was flooded. 

"What? Where? I gotta go, the house is flooded."

I guess I will be replacing the subfloor in Max's room after all. It looked alright yesterday.  Today, not so much.

Guess what we spent our morning doing?  Yep, cleaning up. 

Reset the counter boys, I'll try to beat thirty-three days next time. 

Eventually, I got back to work on the place. 

I left it, prior to Great Flood II, looking kind of like this.

Yesterday, when things were dry.

The ends of the floor joists and the sub floor under the sill were crumble-in-your-hand rotten.I was fixing them by cutting away the rot and sistering another piece of 2x8 next to what was left, but it left me unsatisfied.  This is where the heavy bathtub will be.  It needed to be stronger.  So I did some research and decided the sistered segment needed to go back at least to the steel frame and I needed to find a better way to join the two boards than a crap ton of wood screws.

Thanks Google!

Yeah, bolted together and then bolted to the existing, good, floor joist.

That seemed a lot better.

Then, the existing particle board sub floor was so rotten that I decided to pull it all out, all the way to the outside, and replace it with plywood.  Even under the sill of the wall.  So, I cut into it and was pulling it off the nails that held it to the sill.  A piece I was pulling on pretty hard finally gave way and I suddenly found myself one with the house.

Evil fu**er was hiding under the vapor barrier.

Yep.  I impaled my forearm on the rusty nail.

Awesome. 

It's not like it was probably rusty because the septic tank backed up and drained sewage all over it or anything. 

I cleaned it up and irrigated it with a saline flush I had in the truck. Yeah, sometimes I forget to empty my pockets at work. The kids loved watching that, by the way.

I managed to get back to work, my tetanus is up to date.

Did I mention it was Sarah's birthday.  I know, right? She didn't even mention divorce. She's awesome.

The boys baked her a birthday cake and decorated everything. It was pretty cool.

Yes, it was cooked in the toaster oven. 

Max gave mommy a present.

Singing Inna Godda Da Vida Honey!

Blow out the candles!

The boys approved.

All in all, I'll call it a good day.