The joys of being a home owner

March 15, 2005

So we are now three weeks into our new house.

The things you discover.

Funny smell in the kitchen. Smells like the drains. Take up the covers and Lindsey fills and empties the sink. No water comes through. Must be a blockage. Flush the toilet, water runs down the soil stack that the kitchen outlet shares, and flows down the drains. Hmmmm. Water isn’t quite making it from the sink to the drain. Repeated emptying of the sink and a small puddle appears on the floor. Hmmmm. Remove the footplate on the cupboards and see that the space under the cupboards is a couple of inches under water. Hmmmm. Pipework is hidden behind the cupboards so have to knock them to pieces. A spur from the waste pipe has been left uncapped. Waste water is just gushing out and onto the floor. I remove the lino and the hardboard covering is sodden. I remove all the lino in the kitchen and the whole floor is sodden. Up comes the hardboard and a number of floor boards. Luckily the wood is not rotten. We are living in a kitchen with boards up, drying out. Ho hum. Did I mention that the vendors took the oven, despite it being on the inventory. We are cooking using the van’s calour gas stove. Nice. We can only presume the previous owners didn’t use the sink, just using the dishwasher – the waste water problem only occurred when a large volume of water flushed down the pipe. Great. Getting architects in – looking to build an extension to incresase the size of the kirtchen. So until then we are living in a horrible kitchen. Funny smell in kitchen is now disappearing.

To be replaced by…

Funny noise in the loft.

The pitter patter of tiny feet. Assuming it is squirrels. Pest control came around on Monday and put poison down. Lindsey just rung saying it sounds like there is an army up there. Spoke to pest control Arrr, that is a good sign. They go mental when they eat the poison. Should be dead in 24 hours. Dead and rotting? I thought they’d use new dessicating poison. Apparently not. We’ve got a loft conversion. Will be hard to remove the bodies. Hmmmm.