Monday, August 05, 2013

I just wanted to paint the room

The boys have been bugging us for a year or more to get bunk beds. My mom moved last week and gave us an extra queen size mattress and box spring. This provided a kick in the pants for us to start moving toward putting the boys in the same room. Our bedroom is the biggest in the house, so we figured that we would move the boys into that room and we could take the larger of the two downstairs bedrooms. 

The boys picked out some lively colors and Saturday morning we headed up to start the big transition.


We noticed what we thought was a settling crack in the drywall above our front window. Upon further inspection, the wall was swollen and damp. Ry leaned out the window to find that a piece of the siding had come loose from house. He tucked it back in and we thought, awesome, that was easy! Ry started cutting out the damp sheet rock and we figured we could paint the rest of the room and patch and fix that little spot when we got to it.

Turns out, that "little" spot wasn't so little. We have water leaking into the house from the roof. This rather scary looking "T" is what became of our wall and ceiling.


There was also some mold behind the drywall, so we turned the room into a negative pressure room, had my stepdad swab the mold (hurray for home-inspector family!), and moved into the guest room. On the plus side, if any of us ever gets tuberculosis, I know how to make a negative pressure room now!

The good news is that we caught the leak fairly early and before it invaded the first floor. My stepdad thinks the problem is something called ice-damming and should be a minor patch from a roofer. Like giving a mouse a cookie, however, that may not be the end. Our ceiling is textured in what I like to call "mid-century coverup" and I am afraid replacing just the missing bit will lead to an obvious square in the ceiling. We may pull down the whole ceiling and replace it.

If we pull down the ceiling, we will need to replace the closet walls which were installed all curvy-like and make the ceiling look like its sagging.

If we rip out the closet walls and redo them, the carpet will have holes in it where the previous walls were. We could cut the carpet at the closet and put in some peal-and-stick tiles in the closet.

However.

The carpet is old and needs replaced anyway. Also, Ry is concerned about mold in the carpet with one child who takes Allegra for half the year and the other who gets asthmatic episodes. We can buy and put in hardwood floors for less than we can pay someone to install carpet (a skill not in Ry's set).

All I wanted to do was paint the walls!
 
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