We'll Never Catch Those Varmints

Our little round house has been stripped down to the studs and up to the “rafters.” We have now entered the slow, plodding stage of the process which includes, among other tedious tasks, the removal of every single nail from every stud in the house. Every. Single. Nail. To break the monotony, I temporarily shifted my focus to the removal of an incredibly thick layer of ancient caulk, along with copious bath stickers in the form of beige oyster shells and brown waves (BROWN waves?!), from the one fixture that will remain in the home: the bathtub. Holy cow – I cannot believe that it took over four hours of dedicated elbow grease to get all the gunk and stickers off that tub.

Now, back to nail pulling…While doing this monotonous task it’s easy to muse about how this home will (hopefully) look once all is said and done. This poor little place was never nicely finished, so rather than bringing the home to its former glory, it will instead be better than it ever was. It will have real wood trim, rather than plastic trim pieces around each door and along the baseboard; it will have a sloped wood ceiling in the living room/kitchen spaces, and drywall ceilings in the bed and bathrooms – like a normal house. It will have lighting installed in the ceilings, rather than plastic swag lamps. And it will have tile in the entry and baths and solid surface flooring throughout the rest, rather than moldy carpeting in every nook and cranny – including inside both bathrooms and the utility closet. Ugh – this poor, little house and the things it has had to endure! But, while it WILL have all those elements, what it WON’T have is a round bed(1.)

I have to admit to being gleefully thankful to the perps who broke into our house and helped themselves to that piece of “Yeah, Baby,(2)" but it was still such an extreme violation.

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(1) Greg-added footnote: Unless her husband secretly buys her a round bed for Christmas, which she must accept because it is a gift.

(2) Katie-added footnote: Which will never be replaced, even if received as a gift.

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Since then I have scoured Craigslist as well as the local Facebook pages in hopes of catching up with them. Shockingly, so far I’ve not found anyone posting a round bed, replete with mouse pee in the box springs, for sale. Instead, what I HAVE found in a treasure trove of amazingness, one example of which is the following:

Full disclosure: I truly wanted this item. I mean, WHO WOULDN’T??!! Just think of all the varmints that could be called in and befriended. But here’s how that went down:

I guess he thinks there is a ready market of wanna-be varmint callers, turntables at the ready, within ten minutes of his house. What do I know - maybe he’s right. My loss.

Alright - enough of that tomfoolery. In the continuing saga of the mold-chase, I think we got to the bottom that that issue. We were blessed with a warm day two weeks ago, so excitedly we dashed over to the round house and extended the hose to the affected area. Methodically, we set about isolating where the water breached the house.

Starting at the pavement near the chimney, we sprayed and sprayed for nearly ten minutes. No water inside. We moved up the walls, spraying the chimney stones and edges where the structure meets the house. But again - no water inside. On we went, to the chimney cap. Spray, spray, spray, for many minutes. HEAVY spray. But again, no water inside. Finally to the roof itself, spraying the area that drains down and abuts the chimney. Surely THIS was going to be the answer. But after gallon after gallon of water splashed against the chimney and drained down to the pavement below, once again we found no water inside. How could this be? We KNEW we had an active leak because we had discovered wet, moldy carpeting on the day of our house inspection. Scratching our heads in bemusement, we decided to take a break and tackle this issue again tomorrow.

The next day found us at the round house again, plugging away when a massive storm hit. Rain was pelting down in sheets, along with pea-sized hail. The sound of the rain hitting the fiberglass roof was mesmerizingly delightful, like rain on a tin roof. But then something magical happened. We saw water leaking into the home from somewhere we’d not considered: under the sliding patio door. EUREKA! We nearly danced with glee because this is the simplest, most painless solution of all: caulk.

It just don’t get any better than that!