My Tireless Retirement - Week 189

 

Wow!  What a week I have had!  I worked all day Friday and most of Saturday.  Saturday I took a group of seniors two towns over for a holiday bazaar and chocolate event.  They had samples!  That very same day I also had a pollen allergy attack from hell!  Combined with all the various scents at the bazaar from all the different vendors and I was stuff up so tight I thought my head would explode.  And it wouldn’t have been pretty.

 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the upstairs bathroom toilet was quietly leaking onto the bathroom floor.  By the time I discovered it at nearly 11:00 at night it had flooded the entire bathroom, the upstairs hallway and into my bedroom.  What a mess!

 

But wait!  There’s more.  Sunday morning I awoke with the relief of a clear head and nose only to come  downstairs and find part of my living room ceiling had puddled with some of the residual water along the seams of the sheetrock and was hanging like a bowl, about the size of a medium mixing bowl.  Fortunately I was able to grab the ladder and some rags as well as my trusty Pampered Chef pizza dough roller and work the water out of the seams and that bowl of water through a small hole and drain it all out.  Then I spent some more time rolling the layer of sheetrock paper, texture and layers of latex paint in hopes of reattaching everything back onto the ceiling.  Only thing to do next was allow everything to dry out and hope for the best.  Fortunately, it worked!

 

Could've been much worse!

Thank goodness that it worked out the way that it did.  Had that bulge given way sometime during the night I can only imagine the damage it would’ve caused to the ceiling not to mention the colossal mess I would’ve had on my living room floor.  And!  What if I had been out of town?!  I don’t even want to think about that.  Instead I focused on running a big load of laundry to clean up all the towels and rags I had to use.

 

I have no pictures to show you of the immediate disaster because I was in “OH $H!T!!!” mode and just trying to get this situation taken care of and quickly.  Taking pictures never even crossed my mind.  But suffice it to say it required a trip to Home Depot Sunday afternoon for supplies.  Have I ever mentioned how much I hate plumbing?  Nonetheless, number one was to get new guts to re-plumb the inside of the toilet tank so that it won’t happen again.  Number two was a can of texture for some light ceiling repair once everything was all dried out.  Number three was to get a thermostat to replace the one downstairs that decided now might be a good time to crap out on me.  Plumbing and electrical all in one weekend?  OMG!  

 

I'm sure the calcium in our water caused this to fail

Once I was back home I addressed the toilet straight away and replaced the old fill valve with the new one.  Then I scrubbed the toilet and mopped the floor declaring all is well, except for frequent trips upstairs to check for leaks or drips the next couple of days.  I’m not paranoid or anything.  LOL

 

New fill valve installed

Next was to replace the downstairs thermostat so I had heat on again which was important to finish drying out the ceiling.  I also repositioned the box fans to make sure all of the upstairs carpet dried.  Overall, the damage was rather minimal and I am exceedingly grateful for that.

 

All better!

I worked all day on Monday and then again on Thursday afternoon.  Tuesday I did some meal prepping and was able to add some more delicious meals to the freezer as well as line out meals for the week ahead along with some other chores and tasks I needed to take care of.  I took Wednesday off completely to relax and recharge my batteries.

 

This guy literally saved the day!

Thursday morning I addressed the ceiling repair with some strategic application of texture and allowed that to dry.  I will address the touch up paint on the ceiling later as I do think I’ll be doing a bit more tweaking of the texture to make sure it all matches nicely and blends in before I paint.  It’s a process.

 

Meal prepping

While I wasn’t thrilled with the turn my week took I was ever so grateful and thankful to have the knowledge, ability and means to take care of the situation.  Because of that I can honestly tell you it was not a bad day at all.  I’m hopeful there will be no more house drama for a good long time, but if there is I’ll take care of it.  How was your week?  Anything exciting going on in your world?  I do hope not the kind of excitement I just had.  No BAD Days!