I bought the wrong size subfloor 🙄. Adam got the floor laid down in the tiny utility room but not nailed/secured because I have to get the right size. Since it’s a smaller room, I wanted to get , 2′ x 4′ boards instead of 4′ x 8′, so I searched for 23/32″ boards, which is what the rest of the house is, and bought them online without noting the thickness that showed up in the search results. The ones I got are maybe half that thickness and give when I walk on them. I looked up the size I bought, and they aren’t recommended for regular subfloor; more for attics. Certainly not in front of one of the main doors! I felt so stupid. For right now, he doubled what is down, and once again I have to avoid walking in there. It looks better than it did, though!
Adam is going to have to do some cutting and finagling so we have a floor instead of a bridge between the furnace and water tank houses, but since I got the incorrect subfloor, that isn’t something he can do now. To make my mistake even better, I wasted $79 for delivery. I’m sure I can find something to do with the boards, but I don’t know what yet.
I have been taking Phin out with me when I go out on the porch because he loves to eat grass and greenery, to the point that he will climb me if I have a flower in my hair (something I do when Adam brings me one). I put a small dog leash on him and attach it to the cable we have out there. He loves it a little too much and now nonchalantly walks out the door when I have it open to yell for the boys to come in. Luckily, since he can’t see, he doesn’t just take off and jump off the porch, so I have the time to step out and scoop him up before he gets too far. I have a knack for creating monsters 🤣🤣. He sits at the door and meows to be let out now, too.
A few days ago, I was lying in bed in Mom’s room watching TV, and I heard Phin meowing. I thought it was on my movie at first. I told Adam, so he started calling for Phin and looking for him, as Phin gets lost very frequently and cries until we find him or he follows our voice(s) to the room we’re in. Adam checked behind all the closed doors and outside. About the time I was thinking Phin could have climbed under the floor in the kitchen and was going to get up to help with the search, Adams walks into the bedroom holding a defeated-looking Phin and places him on my pillow. He’s a bit dusty and disoriented and sneezy. Indeed, he had climbed under the subfloor by way of one of the open spaces in the boards between the kitchen and utility room. Probably where the water pipes are near the furnace.
Adam said Phin came right to him when he heard him and he was able to lift him out. He was just down there walking around on the insulation 🙄. Adam covered the openings with our handy dandy coffee table top and a few other wood pieces from when he dismantled furniture I wanted to be rid of.
Phin was missing a day or two later, and the hunt was on again. Adam saw that the boys, Nev and Ollie, had messed up his patch job in the kitchen, and once more, Phin was down under the floor. It is going to be a nightmare when Adam replaces the subfloor in other parts of the house. I have some plastic covering set to buy for when that time comes, but I don’t know how well that will work on a determined, blind cat. Mom’s room is on the other end of the kitchen, so Phin trekked quite a ways under the floor for me to be able to hear him the first time.
I waited excitedly for an entire month after we switched to a tankless water heater to see how much it improved the water bill. It had been $80+ for years, and it was in the $60 range when Mom was alive. When the water bill finally came, I burst into tears. It was $405. For a month. To their credit, the water company lady had called us to say we had a leak a bit after the tankless was installed. However, I thought she was talking about the leak that was just fixed, so Adam told her it was taken care of. But, no…this was a different leak, and much worse. What are the chances? Seriously. Our latest readings were 13,000 gallons of water a month, compared to an average of 1,300 (which is still high for two people).
Since there was no water anywhere in or under the house, I asked the lady to send someone out to see if the leak’s on our end or theirs. She completely ignored me (which I should be used to) and let another month go by and another $400 bill come in. With that bill, she sent someone out and he had Adam turn the water off to the house and he watched the meter. The new leak is somewhere between the water shutoff outside our house by the porch and the meter, which is about 30 yards, give or take.
This new leak didn’t happen until we switched from the hot water tank to tankless, and I have no idea why. Adam didn’t bother anything underground, which is where the new leak is located. It is one heck of a coincidence.
I contacted the American Leak Detection place, and they are going to come find the leak with some equipment, but they cannot do that while it is raining, which it has been doing here since February. The guy is supposed to come next Saturday, God willing and the creek don’t rise…which, the creek is rising since it’s been raining for months on end. After that, Adam and I are going to get a crash course in plumbing because we certainly can’t afford to pay a plumber to fix an underground leak. The water bill is over $1,000 now since we’ve had to wait until we had the money for the leak detection guy, and I hate knowing that I have to pay that when I didn’t even get to enjoy all that water. The only silver lining I can see is that the ground should be fairly soft to dig in since it’s…well, mud.
Cari R Esta 