Happy Valentine's Day ... from my Leaky Basement to Yours

Yadda yadda yadda yadda.  Whatever.  That's it for the festive message.  Happy V-Day to those who have something to celebrate.  Happy knitting and fur baby day to the rest of us.

Onward.

I could have sworn I was blogging more frequently than I apparently am.  I think I must blog in my head.  Or my sleep.

I seem not to have accomplished much in the last two weeks.  Probably that's due in part to the fact that it's back to Bar Society marking season.  Every other week will basically be a knit-free week.  And we're in a very busy time at work. 

I knit the Thermis cowl out of the Malabrigo Rios in Zarzamora from my parents- and sister-in-law.  It's a cowl which starts in the round until you separate for the button holey bits and then you knit it flat.  I wanted to use two of the wooden buttons made by my sister-in-law (Wild Rose Wood Art in Calgary). 

Thermis is a paid-for pattern, but it's relatively inexpensive (even by Canadian standards).  [$2.75 USD and $3.91 CAD].  I knit it using a 4.0 mm circ.  It was a speedy knit - I started January 30 and finished January 31.  I learned a new skill - buttonholes.  I also figured out some sort of backward loop cast on.  I don't think it's the typical one, but whatever I did, it worked to add extra stitches.  

The Zarzamora is actually a beautiful colour. When I first looked at it, I thought it was mostly grey with some purplish in it.  But it's green and purple.  I don't think it has any grey in it whatsoever. 

The Thermis can be worn buttoned up or partially or wholly unbuttoned. Leonard wears it well, and the Ginger Jar looks pretty styling too.

Last time I blogged I said that I had ordered some of the Stylecraft DK acrylic yarn from Wool Wearhouse in the UK and was waiting for it.  It took a week to arrive.  Christine's took two and a half weeks.   

It comes in lovely organza bags. 

And I don't even have to worry about storage (other than making sure it stays out of Desmond's line of fire when he decides to mark his territory - ahem....darned dog) because it's not going to prove tempting for any creepy crawlies.  Unless, of course, there are such things as acrylic beetles.  With my luck, of course, there are ...

I decided to start the Cosy Stripe blanket first as a sort of a warm-up or a learning blanket.  It's alternating rows of granny stitch (2 rows) and regular double [US]/treble [UK] crochet (2 rows).

So I started and was going along merrily until I discovered that I had somehow been decreasing stitches.  Uh oh.

So I frogged it back to the blue stripe and started again, this time making sure I was counting by using stitch markers every 20 stitches.

I thought I was going along swimmingly.  Doesn't this look lovely and straight?

Then I took a look at the other end.

Bear in mind that I had to add a small amount of yarn to each row, because of course while I had been steadily decreasing, there wasn't enough yarn for the actual length of the row.  So there are now a gazillion ends everywhere.

But I seem to have been decreasing again on the messy end.

Sigh.

I am now 14 stripes in.  I am NOT going to frog it again.  The heck with it.  This is just a learning project, it's acrylic yarn, and it's only going to be a little blanket for when I nap on the couch.  I think what I am going to do is to attempt to go a little wider on that side.  Then when it comes time to do the edging, I'll do some half double/half trebles or something to bring the sides out to where they are supposed to be before doing the actual edging.  Even if it looks crappy, I don't care.

But I must say, it has dampened my enthusiasm for the wretched thing.

And I did a little test sunny granny square (not using the correct colours) to see how it works up.  Christine was getting gauge of 11.5-12 cm for hers.  Mine is 8 cm. 

Apparently I am as tight a crocheter as I am a knitter.

Maybe it's as much as 8.5 cm, but it's pretty small.

So I am going to leave this all aside for now and continue to focus on knitting.

I have now completed my Pandora's Sox socks.  That's pair #3 for the year.  I realize that's only three days of sock knitting for Mina and Fairy Little, but it's all I can squeeze in with a full-time job and a couple of part-time gigs.

This is the yarn by Artistic Yarns by Abi on Etsy.  They're not quite perfectly matchy matchy, but they're close enough.

The yarn is a 75/20/5 MNstellina blend.  It's reasonably soft to knit with.  It's also a 2-ply and is a bit splitty. I'm not sure how I feel about the stellina in it (if it's gold, is it aurina?).  We'll see once they've been worn.

So that's it for the knitting, folks. Actually, that's it for the crafting.  

I started on a pair of socks for Princess last night.  Apparently the 68 stitch socks are a bit tight and she has trouble getting them on her feet.  So I am going back to 72 stitch socks on 2.5 mm needles for her.  I think she washes her socks in warm water when she's at camp, so they're a little tighter.  She has also been getting holes in lots of her socks.  So I have to knit her a bunch more.

If this were a podcast, we'd be moving into the Odds & Ends or 10% or whatever the non-yarn related section would be called.  Feel free to walk away now.

Last time Princess was home on her week long furlough (not this most recent time, but the one before that), she came up to the knitting room and announced that we have mushrooms growing in the basement.

Um. What?

Mushrooms?

So I went down to the basement. And sure enough, there were mushrooms (or some sort of nasty pale fungus) growing along the baseboard on one wall.

And the carpet was wet.

We appeared to have a leak.

So I ended up on mushroom duty and I pulled out all the nasty fungi.  We sprinkled the carpet with baking soda and left it to dry.  

I don't go down to the basement other than to feed the cat and clean out its litter box. I certainly don't do any kind of inspection.  That's Princess's area.  She's the one who lives down there.

So as it turns out, our basement is leaking.

This is a five-year old house.

So last week I called the insurance broker who called the insurance company. The adjuster and a man from the remediation company came out to take a look the day I called.  

It turned out that the leak was coming from some sort of capped off access pipe which had been improperly sealed.  So there was waste water leaking into the basement.  And it appears to have been a long-standing thing.

The adjuster said initially that it didn't look as though it was going to be covered by insurance.  The remediation guy said it might be around $1500 to remove some of the drywall, peel back the carpet, dry it, remove any wet insulation, spray it with antimicrobial whatnot, re-affix the carpet, put down new baseboard and paint the walls.  

They suggested that I get a plumber in to snake the lines to see if there is any kind of blockage or breakage causing the leak. 

So I called the plumbing company and arranged for them to come on Thursday afternoon.  I got a call Thursday morning from the plumbing company asking whether we needed the pipes snaked or whether what we actually needed was a camera to video the lines to determine what was going on.

The latter, I told her. But as luck would have it, their camera was out for repair. So she referred me to another company which they use as a back-up.  

I called and asked whether I could get someone with the camera in to take a look at my plumbing issue. Buddy showed up that afternoon with his fiber optic camera.  It was quite an experience.

He put the camera into the leaking pipe. And it looked like a clogged artery.  Let's put it this way: if that had been an artery in my body, I would have stroked out or had a myocardial infarct ages ago.  It was gummed up with grease and whatnot. You could see the sludge falling off the walls of the pipe and clogging it up.

Oh the shame of it all.  And it's not as if we dump grease down the sink. But now we need to wipe down all the dirty dishes with paper towels before we rinse them and wash them. Ugh.

So Buddy offered to get his power water blaster thing which puts out 5000 PSI worth of pressure. He promised to have that pipe as clean as the day it was installed.

Go ahead, I said.  It's only money....

So that's what he did.  He had the camera gizmo and the water pressure blasting gizmo thing in at the same time.  And I worked the foot pedal.

At the end of the day, it was $632 for the camera and the cleaning, but the pipe is cleaned out.

His explanation was that when water was being run from the kitchen sink or the dishwasher, the pipe was so clogged that the water had nowhere to go.  If there hadn't been a leak down by the access cap, then the pipes would have backed up into the kitchen sink.

So I put him on the phone to the adjuster and they talked and whatnot.  The upshot is that the work is in fact covered by insurance because the sewer back-up endorsement kicks in. (Thank god for insurance is all I can say).

So the adjuster gave me the low down on what would happen.  He told me that he had already received a a quote from the remediation guy.  The first step would be to bring in industrial sized dehumidifiers and air movers.  Those are supposed to run for 5 days.  Then they have to do moisture testing and certify that the area is dry.

Then the second stage is tear-down. That's when it was going to look "horrendous". They tear out the affected drywall, pull back the carpet, remove the baseboard, remove the insulation, etc. 

At that stage, then an auditor does some sort of a check and the adjustor has to approve the work order and estimate. 

Then the third stage is the re-build stage.

So this is a process which takes several weeks from start to finish.

So that all sounded fine and dandy. Princess had gone back up to Alberta on Wednesday morning, so it was just me and the Lad at that point. 

I was at work early on Friday and got a call at about 7:40 am from the remediation guy.  He wanted to send me a work authorization form for my signature.  He said he'd have his people dropping off the dehumidifier that morning between 10:00 and 10:30.

So I filled out the authorization and emailed it back to him.  I also called the Lad to give him the heads-up that the remediation company would be dropping off the dehumidifier around 10, so he needed to get up and crate the boys.  Lilah is better behaved around strangers.  But Des and Bastian bark like crazy and can't be trusted not to terrorize strangers. With them in the house, we don't need an alarm system.

Princess had decided she was coming back home to deal with the plumbing "emergency" so she had to book her flight and arrange to come back.  I thought that was a little extreme, but she has been unhappy there lately and this was her last shift before she does her last block for school and writes her ticket. 

I called the Lad around lunch hour to ask whether the remediation people had dropped off the dehumidifier.  He said they had and that they were still there working.  He was getting panicked because he had to go to school, so he said something about giving them his house key.

Here's the text exchange from around 5:15 Friday:

Princess:     "You still at work or at home, Ma?"

Me:    "Just heading to my car. Why?"

Princess:   "Curious about how it's going at the house"

Me:  "All they were doing today was installing the dehumidifier and air mover.  They weren't tearing anything up or down.  So that's why I was surprised Q said they would be there all day. The dehumidifiers have to run for about 5 days before they do anything."

The Lad:    "They fixed the plumbing, yo."

Then he sent these two pictures.

I nearly fainted.

So much for not doing anything other than installing the dehumidifier.

I panicked a little and decided to put a little mustard on it and boogied home. The Lad has a Friday class from 1:00-5:30 so he was out.  And the dogs were still crated from 10:00 that morning.

I got home and there was a red rubberized floor runner down my hallway and going to the basement.

And then there was the basement.

Now, I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that the insulation is supposed to be yellow and not brown. 

The walls were soaking wet.

Apparently when they opened the drywall, the space was full of millipedes.

Great.  Millipedes and toadstools.  Welcome to my charmed life.

But getting back to the "fixed the plumbing" part.  

I wondered what the Lad was talking about.  Buddy with the video camera had (I thought) identified the problem.

But no.  

As it turned out, there was a pipe coming down from the kitchen which was leaking.

I suspect this was the root of the problem.

I'm also not a plumbing expert, but I'm pretty sure those cracks aren't supposed to be there.

I'm going out on a limb here and saying I think that's where the water was coming  from.

That, combined with the clogged artery pipe and the leaking access cap, resulted in the leakage in the basement.  It could have been going on for ages.

Not surprisingly, the remediation guy had to revise his estimate. I'm thinking it got revised upwards by several thousand dollars.

Did I say thank god for insurance?

Anyway, Princess came back yesterday morning.  Then she booked herself out on a flight to Nanaimo [on the other end of the country in BC] to visit the boyfriend today.  She'll be back on Wednesday night.

Apparently the Lad is going to Montreal for reading week. He and his girlfriend and some other friends are leaving on Tuesday.

I'm not sure when the remediation guys are coming back. But I'll be leaving my house at around 6:45 am on Tuesday and won't be back until around 7 pm.  

Princess will be here for presumably the rest of the tear down and the re-build.  

You'll notice in the above pictures that there is about a 6' x 5' area where the carpet has been removed. The original plan (before the discovery of the cracked pipe and the millipedes) was to pry back the carpet and dry it and sanitize it.

I'm thinking that the removal of a large chunk of it pretty much precludes that plan of action.

So the basement carpet will have to be replaced. And that is going to mean that all the furniture (which is currently hidden under all that polythene) will have to be moved somewhere in order to do it.

Oh well.  At least it's getting fixed.

So that, my friends, is what's going on in this part of my world.  There may or may not be much crafting in my immediate future.

I leave you with this photo of Bastian.  I love him so much it almost hurts. 

Over and out, folks.  Enjoy your day.  And if you're in Canada, enjoy Family Day or Heritage Day tomorrow.

We'll be celebrating millipede day here.

 

Comments

[Leslie]

Sorry about your basement misfortune. Owning a home can be a bitch sometimes.

[Erica]

UUUUUGH, that's awful. At least you found it before it turned into black mold or something toxic. Still sucks, though.

I totally know how you feel about Bastian. I don't even understand why I love my little Monkey so much...probably cuz he's always so happy to see me and it makes you feel nice. :)