Cosmic Joke

I'm still waiting for the punch line. I think it has something to do with a house collapsing on my head.

So...I had a productive week last week. My brother was enormously helpful both as a fellow worker and musclebound laborer. Much of my week was spent organizing and hiring plumbers, contractors, tree removal people, lawn maintenance., etc. After my brother returned home and most of the work I had hired out was finished, I began painting the interior of my father's home.

I rented a paint sprayer and went from room to room dressed up in a hat, goggles, and a haz-mat-looking paper suit. I finished all the ceilings in about an hour.

Playing with power tools is fun!

It took me much longer to begin painting the walls the old-fashioned way---with a roller and paint brush.

I left my dad's place feeling quite pleased with myself and hopeful that things would continue in the same way, with ease and rapidity.

While I was gone DH reported that The Rationalist had accidentally knocked down a bunch of tiles in the bathroom that he and The Intuitive use. We weren't upset with him because we knew that the bathroom needed work and it was only a matter of time before we were going to have to do it.

When I arrived home and checked the shower out, I was dismayed. When our house was built, the builders did not install cement board in the bathrooms, but instead put in green board....which is basically just drywall with a special "moisture resistant" paper on the front of it. The drywall had soaked up water for God only knows how long.

I began tearing it all out, discovering it was completely infested with black mold.

what fun.

Here's what our guest bathroom looks like now:

I still have a lot more to tear out. I've armed myself with a mask, goggles and gloves and closed off the bathroom from the rest of the house as much as possible.

This is going to be a huge PITA to deal with.

Working on my dad's house has been fun in a strange way...because we have had the funds to hire people and purchase the materials needed for the house repairs.....all thanks to my dad's retirement savings.

It's not as much fun when you have to do the same things to your own home with no money to fund the project, although taking a hammer to tile and drywall does seem to have a satisfying element to it. The only good thing is that I know exactly what has to be done to fix our house and in what order.

I guess the timing is right for this unmitigated bathroom disaster, as far as having acquired the appropriate knowledge goes. I just wish the timing was equally as right financially.

Sadly, I think my blog topics in the near future are all going to be about the ensuing hilarity of me and DH fixing our bathroom and my dad's bathrooms all by ourselves.

If the stress doesn't get to us...the toxic mold probably will.