An End of a Beginning
Jun. 4th, 2023 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerIt’s been getting on to a year and a half since I looked down one evening and saw a wet patch in the carpeting under one wheel of my computer desk chair. My first puzzled thought was to wonder when I’d had some water at my desk to spill it. A paper towel couldn’t sop it up. Then, I noticed other, smaller wet spots starting to show scattered across those bits of the carpet in my “computer room” that weren’t covered in books I’d run out of space in my bookcases for. Concerned for those books I started clearing the floor, but had to stuff what I was moving into the remaining open space in my bedroom, and then the guest bedroom. More wet spots kept showing up.
Asking around about this produced the explanation water was seeping in from outside. There’d been a heavy snowfall about a week before while I’d been snug and content inside, but now I had the distinct impression the complex roofline of my block of townhouses had a bit of a side wall of my unit bump against the roof of the next unit over, and the snow melting off that roof had to be seeping in that way. I started clearing out the bookcases against that wall, piling the books from them on the sides of my staircase and then in any open space left downstairs. With the furniture in the upstairs hall, the room was clear enough at last to remove the register from the heating vent and start ripping the carpet loose from there, revealing the foam rubber padding underneath it that had been sponging up water.
With the carpet pulled back from most the room and the padding cut away in soggy chunks, I could get ahead of the water still seeping in from the corner. In an odd way, I was energised at the thought of having the chance to cull my books a little at last and perhaps get new and bigger bookcases to replace the ones whose particleboard construction had got a bit wet and swollen. First, though, I had to get the room back in order.
As the snow melted away and the sponges I had tucked into the corner of the room no longer had to be wrung out, I had my computer set up on the dining room table downstairs and wasn’t spending quite as much time upstairs any more. Calling up the insurance company wound up getting repairs arranged through my condominium corporation; they started by putting new shingles on the roofs. In the meantime, with help from my parents I had the old wallpaper with its red-outlined paisley plant pattern covering the top half of my computer room’s walls removed and was working on repainting the maroon paint covering the lower half of the walls with a sort of sky blue. The old carpet was rolled up and stuffed into the back of my garage, and I supposed I’d have to get rid of it at some point.
Contractors came in and put down a new laminate wood-look flooring, and I could move my computer upstairs again (if not after I’d set up the old Color Computer 3 passed along through my family on the desk instead for a little while). Moving the books back in from where they were piled everywhere took a bit longer; I looked around for new bookcases before managing to get some from Ikea. Filling up the bookcases in just the right way is an ongoing project, but this weekend I did manage at last to drop off the old carpet and the long cardboard boxes the bookcases had been flat-packed in at the municipal waste disposal facility. That’s one step ahead.
Asking around about this produced the explanation water was seeping in from outside. There’d been a heavy snowfall about a week before while I’d been snug and content inside, but now I had the distinct impression the complex roofline of my block of townhouses had a bit of a side wall of my unit bump against the roof of the next unit over, and the snow melting off that roof had to be seeping in that way. I started clearing out the bookcases against that wall, piling the books from them on the sides of my staircase and then in any open space left downstairs. With the furniture in the upstairs hall, the room was clear enough at last to remove the register from the heating vent and start ripping the carpet loose from there, revealing the foam rubber padding underneath it that had been sponging up water.
With the carpet pulled back from most the room and the padding cut away in soggy chunks, I could get ahead of the water still seeping in from the corner. In an odd way, I was energised at the thought of having the chance to cull my books a little at last and perhaps get new and bigger bookcases to replace the ones whose particleboard construction had got a bit wet and swollen. First, though, I had to get the room back in order.
As the snow melted away and the sponges I had tucked into the corner of the room no longer had to be wrung out, I had my computer set up on the dining room table downstairs and wasn’t spending quite as much time upstairs any more. Calling up the insurance company wound up getting repairs arranged through my condominium corporation; they started by putting new shingles on the roofs. In the meantime, with help from my parents I had the old wallpaper with its red-outlined paisley plant pattern covering the top half of my computer room’s walls removed and was working on repainting the maroon paint covering the lower half of the walls with a sort of sky blue. The old carpet was rolled up and stuffed into the back of my garage, and I supposed I’d have to get rid of it at some point.
Contractors came in and put down a new laminate wood-look flooring, and I could move my computer upstairs again (if not after I’d set up the old Color Computer 3 passed along through my family on the desk instead for a little while). Moving the books back in from where they were piled everywhere took a bit longer; I looked around for new bookcases before managing to get some from Ikea. Filling up the bookcases in just the right way is an ongoing project, but this weekend I did manage at last to drop off the old carpet and the long cardboard boxes the bookcases had been flat-packed in at the municipal waste disposal facility. That’s one step ahead.
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Date: 2023-06-06 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-07 12:27 am (UTC)