The Long of It

First off, these image may make a person want to either wretch or cry, or both. Consider yourself warned. (Maybe I'm not ready to write this post just yet . . . ) But the story must be told. I am putting my happy face on.

The image you see above was discovered in the boys' room on Friday night after pulling up their carpet in anticipation of the carpet install that was not. Our contractor stopped by on Saturday to take a preliminary look and began work on Monday morning. As he pulled off board after board of siding the dry rot continued down the wall. It actually looked pretty good in the middle, but he wanted to make sure the nightmare actually had an ending point (I'm still not convinced we have reached that mystical point). At the bottom of the wall his hand went straight through the plywood and we discovered a rotted out support beam that was holding up my boys' bedroom. This was a bad thing. It required jacking up the house. Very nerve-racking.

We also discovered this lovely nest of mold (shown below) that is currently attached to the sheetrock in my living room (we have not begun the removal of this exciting piece just yet). I finally asked my contractor how many thousands of dollars it was costing me every time he talked to me. He just laughed and said: "Oh, it's not thousands, just hundreds." Is that supposed to make me feel better?

By Monday night all of the dry rot was replaced and Sean only had one teeny section of carpet left to remove from our closet before the scheduled carpet install on Tuesday morning. So, at about 9:30pm Sean bravely pulled up the carpet and found this:

Oh, yes, there was more of that nasty stuff. Our contractor was coming back the next day to finish up the siding. We figured we would just have him deal with the dry rot first.

So, Tuesday morning arrives. The long-awaited day, and "what to our wondering eyes should appear?" but carpet that falls apart in the carpet layers hands. Yes, you read right. The brand-new carpet - straight from the factory - disintegrated in the carpet layers hands as he was double checking the color with Sean. Admittedly, this was the lowest point in the whole ordeal. My house was torn apart, mattresses overflowing in the living room, a house full of tack strips, and the prospect of another two weeks without carpet. Bad day.

We cancelled our order with Home Depot and found a nice local carpet company in town. We found carpet that we liked much better and just swallowed hard when we looked at the price tag, but said yes. (The tremendous amount of frustration that had accompanied us by this point made money seem like a very irrelevant thing.) Sean rolled the old carpets back out, moved all the mattresses back into make-shift bedrooms and we sat tight for two more weeks. Aside from the general mess of it all, the only dangerous part was traversing the stairs that were covered in tack strips. It was rather nerve-racking. It is all over now, though (except for the mold in the wall in the living room, and a number of plumbing problems), and we are all grateful to have something so luxuriously soft and beautiful underfoot. As soon as my camera battery recharges I will post pictures. Happy, happy day.