I love owning a house. I really do. But...not this week.
Side note: Garry was out of town all week.
The week started with windy days, and so the pilot light on our water heater went out Tuesday. I realized afterward that this was more of a minor setback and one that I can easily take care of by myself. However, when I first discovered we didn't have hot water I was a bit...overwhelmed. Thankfully my mom was visiting so I had her moral support as I tried to figure out how to get this water heater working again. The directions were right on the water heater, so at least I didn't have to go digging for a manual of any kind. Or course, printed next to the directions is a warning label depicting an explosion and a person catching on fire because they failed in their attempts to light the pilot light safely. Nice. Apparently one is supposed to wait 10 minutes between switching the gas off so that all the gas leaves. However, I was reading the knobs wrong, so 10 minutes turned into...a couple hours between attempts at following this directions and NOT exploding. But after it was done and that little blue flame came back to life, I was proud I did it.
For my next "joy" I need to back up to right before I discovered the water heater not working. My mom was staying the night, and I was going to have her sleep in the guest room downstairs in our basement. Now, the basement isn't too bad, but I admit I don't clean it very regularly. So I was cleaning up the small bathroom when I discovered...bugs. Tiny little bugs ALL OVER the floor. And not just in the bathroom, all around the basement. Most of them were dead, but still. Yuck.
So now, even as I type, the pest control guy is here spraying all over my house. Because SILVERFISH were also FALLING FROM THE CEILING this week. Yuck. And there are a whole bunch of spider egg-sacks in our basement windows. Yuck Yuck.
Turns out that the bugs all over the floor are called...springtails? I think that's what he said. He said they are attracted to humidity. On my next Target run I shall be buying a dehumidifier. I almost posted a picture of what they look like...but I'll leave that to you adventurous sorts who don't get creeped out by bugs to bing search that.
And now, the final "joy": mold. Our master bathroom has wallpaper and no vent fan. Usally we just shower with the door open to let the moisture escape, but apparently that isn't good enough. I discovered yesterday when I was cleaning in the bathroom that the wallpaper is coming away from the wall. I lift it up to find oodles of black mold. Yuck. So I peeled back a section of the wallpaper. Yuck Yuck. I should have taken a picture, but I didn't think of that right away. To the Internet I went to find some solutions to cleaning it up. White vinegar to the rescue! so I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed the mold and it actually came off really well. But now I have a chunk of wallpaper missing, and now we will have to figure out what our next step is with that. I like having projects to do around the house, but tackling a bathroom re-do may be above my skill set.
Well, I feel better about my bug situation at least now that the house has been sprayed and treated. And they'll be back in August as well. Die bugs, DIE!
We just installed a fan and timer in the basement shower to vent it because we were having mold problems. Justin did it himself. We'll need to put one in upstairs when we put a shower in up here but that also involves a new window and new tile and a shower. So that will be a big thing. Sorry it all had to happen while Garry was gone.
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