Who says you can't have fun when you're not climbing?
Climbing plans dashed due to bad weather. Instead I turrn my attention to matters at home, namely the house, namely the downstairs bedroom which has been ominously causing me stress.
Calgary experienced torrential rain and I didn't learn from last year re: keeping my gutters clean. My downstairs basement carpet in the bedroom was soaked. Like squishy wet feet soaked. I ignored it for a while, not quite sure what to do. Well thats not true, I knew exactly what I needed to do I just didn't want to do it. I was enjoying some serious denial thinking maybe it would dry, maybe there were carpet angels who fixed this sort of problem. Ya, no.
So in the absence of climbing today I took a deep breath and got down to it.
1. Go buy a very nice wet/dry shop vac (and still lament the loss of my other brand new shop vac when my garage got broken into - get over it Lise) Found out that other people must be in urgent need of wet/dry shop vacs because there was only one left, and I was able to snag the last one. Not as powerful as my first beloved shop vac but hey, I'm sooooo over that now.
2. I pull everything out of the bedroom including dismantling the bed. But first having to rearrange the gear room so there is actually room for the bed. Then drag, curse, drag, stop, swear and eventually get everything out of the wet bedroom and into the now full gear room.
3. Start to use the new spanky shop vac in the squishy bedroom and realized this was like pissing on a forest fire. I know what needs to happen... accepting that I just spent $200 bucks on something that won't help (at least for today)
4. Begin to start pulling up the wet heavy carpet to be greeted by soaking wet underlay. This stuff was never going to dry and I couldn't even imagine how much shop-vaccing would get it even to the damp stage.
5. Decision time... call in the professionals to fix the problem aka which means they dry the carpet and replace the underlay, a repeat of the $600 solution last summer. But I'm not certain this won't happen again. I'm assuming this is in fact a problem with me not cleaning my guttters. Because if its not then that means there's a problem with the grading of my backyard and... well lets just say I am still firmly in denial and assuming this can be fixed by keeping the gutter clean but I'm not 100% sure. So do I want to spend money fixing a problem that might happen again...
6. I feel some relief that I finally did get someone to clean out my gutters in the hopes that this is the solution. I won't even think of the grading of my backyard unless I really have to.
7. Decision made, the carpet is toast, done, finito, I'm ripping it out and turfing it. So tug, tug, grunt, pull, swear at the squishy wet mess I'm in. Do you know how heavy wet carpet is? Fucking heavy. I manage to get the disgusting mess rolled in a fashion so I can pull up the underlay
8. Did you know that underlay is glued to the floor? Oh ya that is sooooooo much fun. I'm having a ball here, a one woman party.
9. Getting the underlay outside wasn't so bad, wet and disgusting but do-able.
10. However, getting a wet carpet outside is another thing all together, and I couldn't stomach a wet rolled up, mold inducing germ fest, sitting in my basement festering.
11. I roll, drag the carpet to the base of my stairs which leads outside, trying to ignore how wet I'm getting handling this mess. Not too many stairs... I can do this, grunt, slip, pull & push this fucker. No go, I'm halfway up the stairs and can't drag it any further, now it's wedged there. Take a couple deep breaths and think "serenity now Lise" that's gotta be better than swearing like a truck driver. Hmm what to do...
12. I manage to push it down the 6 stairs I just worked my ass off to get it up and it's sitting in a sopping mess on the floor again. I'm imagining this carpet has an evil personality and he's laughing at my inability to throw him out, I mean this carpet has a bad-ass attitude. I'll fix him. (Ok I'm abit delusional now)
13. I find my dull carpet knife and start hacking the sucker to smaller pieces which I can drag outside. And it feels oddly satisfying to be shredding him. (must discuss this with my therapist)
14. At this point, I'm wet, dirty, probably smelly, I know I've sucked way too many funky carpet fibres into my lungs for my own good. The back bedroom is empty with very old lino exposed, remnants of stuck underlay, its sticky from the glue - in other words a real prize to behold. But it's DRY!!
So ya who says you can't have fun at home, I mean I bet I got an equivalent work out of a climbing day, had to do some problem solving, deal with stress and probably put my lungs in severe jeopardy. Why climb when I can do this?
Now I just need to find the phone number for 1-800-pick up my wet carpet or more aptly called "Got Junk?" Anyhow the bad-ass carpet is now outside and it can do what ever it wants out there, have a party with the mold, make new germ friends, I don't care.
Damn, I sure hope I can climb next weekend, sticking around home is hard work.....
Calgary experienced torrential rain and I didn't learn from last year re: keeping my gutters clean. My downstairs basement carpet in the bedroom was soaked. Like squishy wet feet soaked. I ignored it for a while, not quite sure what to do. Well thats not true, I knew exactly what I needed to do I just didn't want to do it. I was enjoying some serious denial thinking maybe it would dry, maybe there were carpet angels who fixed this sort of problem. Ya, no.
So in the absence of climbing today I took a deep breath and got down to it.
1. Go buy a very nice wet/dry shop vac (and still lament the loss of my other brand new shop vac when my garage got broken into - get over it Lise) Found out that other people must be in urgent need of wet/dry shop vacs because there was only one left, and I was able to snag the last one. Not as powerful as my first beloved shop vac but hey, I'm sooooo over that now.
2. I pull everything out of the bedroom including dismantling the bed. But first having to rearrange the gear room so there is actually room for the bed. Then drag, curse, drag, stop, swear and eventually get everything out of the wet bedroom and into the now full gear room.
3. Start to use the new spanky shop vac in the squishy bedroom and realized this was like pissing on a forest fire. I know what needs to happen... accepting that I just spent $200 bucks on something that won't help (at least for today)
4. Begin to start pulling up the wet heavy carpet to be greeted by soaking wet underlay. This stuff was never going to dry and I couldn't even imagine how much shop-vaccing would get it even to the damp stage.
5. Decision time... call in the professionals to fix the problem aka which means they dry the carpet and replace the underlay, a repeat of the $600 solution last summer. But I'm not certain this won't happen again. I'm assuming this is in fact a problem with me not cleaning my guttters. Because if its not then that means there's a problem with the grading of my backyard and... well lets just say I am still firmly in denial and assuming this can be fixed by keeping the gutter clean but I'm not 100% sure. So do I want to spend money fixing a problem that might happen again...
6. I feel some relief that I finally did get someone to clean out my gutters in the hopes that this is the solution. I won't even think of the grading of my backyard unless I really have to.
7. Decision made, the carpet is toast, done, finito, I'm ripping it out and turfing it. So tug, tug, grunt, pull, swear at the squishy wet mess I'm in. Do you know how heavy wet carpet is? Fucking heavy. I manage to get the disgusting mess rolled in a fashion so I can pull up the underlay
8. Did you know that underlay is glued to the floor? Oh ya that is sooooooo much fun. I'm having a ball here, a one woman party.
9. Getting the underlay outside wasn't so bad, wet and disgusting but do-able.
10. However, getting a wet carpet outside is another thing all together, and I couldn't stomach a wet rolled up, mold inducing germ fest, sitting in my basement festering.
11. I roll, drag the carpet to the base of my stairs which leads outside, trying to ignore how wet I'm getting handling this mess. Not too many stairs... I can do this, grunt, slip, pull & push this fucker. No go, I'm halfway up the stairs and can't drag it any further, now it's wedged there. Take a couple deep breaths and think "serenity now Lise" that's gotta be better than swearing like a truck driver. Hmm what to do...
12. I manage to push it down the 6 stairs I just worked my ass off to get it up and it's sitting in a sopping mess on the floor again. I'm imagining this carpet has an evil personality and he's laughing at my inability to throw him out, I mean this carpet has a bad-ass attitude. I'll fix him. (Ok I'm abit delusional now)
13. I find my dull carpet knife and start hacking the sucker to smaller pieces which I can drag outside. And it feels oddly satisfying to be shredding him. (must discuss this with my therapist)
14. At this point, I'm wet, dirty, probably smelly, I know I've sucked way too many funky carpet fibres into my lungs for my own good. The back bedroom is empty with very old lino exposed, remnants of stuck underlay, its sticky from the glue - in other words a real prize to behold. But it's DRY!!
So ya who says you can't have fun at home, I mean I bet I got an equivalent work out of a climbing day, had to do some problem solving, deal with stress and probably put my lungs in severe jeopardy. Why climb when I can do this?
Now I just need to find the phone number for 1-800-pick up my wet carpet or more aptly called "Got Junk?" Anyhow the bad-ass carpet is now outside and it can do what ever it wants out there, have a party with the mold, make new germ friends, I don't care.
Damn, I sure hope I can climb next weekend, sticking around home is hard work.....
posted by Lise B at Saturday, June 16, 2007
1 Comments:
Hmm...I didn't climb this weekend either. Mostly because I have climbed the past four weekends and despite a spectacular, sunny weekend, I wanted a break. Since this is California, we have many spectacular, sunny weekends yet to come. Hey, we pay a lot to have endless spectacular, sunny weather! But I did spend Sat running errands like a normal person - bank, post office, farmer's market, grocery, etc. Spent Sunday eating a prix fixe meal at a rather foofoo winery (Wente) to celebrate a friend's new job. Note to self- always check what the fixe prix is before eating at a foofoo winery! But most importantly, you need to fix that leakage issue since that downstairs bedroom is my digs when I visit and I don't want to commune with mold and germs! Here's hoping the gutter-cleaning solved the leaking problems! Do I get to pick new carpet colors (say a lovely shade of pink ;))? -MG (hey, we pay a lot for our sunshine)
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