Substrate of Mold

Isn't it pretty?? This is what greeted us from behind the toilet when we moved into our house. Mom and I were quick to discuss what we should do about it. After about a week, I had time to clean up a bit. I got my bleach water and sprayed the guts out of the little mold critters. I was so happy that the black mold came right off, unfortunately, what you see above did not. I also found standing water behind the toilet. =( I knew that our next step was to contact the maintenance department at the school so they could come fix the leak. (insert music of impending dooooom)

After I had gotten home from a crazy day of switching classes and transferring credits, I came home to find random guys walking all through my house and Tyler sitting in the office. (This never happens because the office is HOT) I soon found out that when Charlie went to check out the leak, the hose sprang off and started shooting water everywhere. It took them a long time to get it shut off because our shutoff valve is in a teeny tiny trapdoor outside (stupid).

 So the bathroom, hall, and part of the bedroom flooded. The maintenance guys worked for awhile, but sadly Charlie's son was in a car accident and he had to leave. Tyler and I hung around the house for awhile and tried to relax. The guys had set up a large blower and we had the air in our bedroom running. We got curious and did some investigating and discovered that the water had seeped under a wall and into our spare room too. Thankfully, nothing in there has any water damage. SO, we took a little stroll over to the physical plant and got ourselves a dehumidifier. They told us to keep the house closed up and it should dry.

In the meantime, our spare freezer started leaking, or something, but there was water under it. So we investigated that and just let it go to see if it still happened. Thankfully, nothing is wrong with it other than getting too warm between the hot water heater and dryer.

At this point we thought that we could finally just wait out the carpet, and it would dry. No biggie right??? Craziness done right??? Wrong.

We were Skyping Mom around 9 when we blew a breaker. This was something that was very common in our old house so we went to reset it, but it didn't work. Mom got Dad to come and Skype with us and after about 10 minutes we decided there was no hope. We were going to have to spend the night with power in only half of the house.

It has been too hot to even think about
sitting on our couches, we have been
"chillin" in the loungers

Now because we had the house closed, and it has been in the 90's the last two days, and we had no air conditioning, it was HOT. We spent the very warm night on separate couches in the living room. In the morning I got ready in the dark and headed off to class. When I got back later Charlie was back along with another man we had not met yet. We told them about the power and they called the electrician for us, Praise the Lord he got our power back on and helped us separate the circuits. We had air again.

As the guys were looking around and situating our fans (including the air, we are up to 4) I was doing homework and Tyler was with the electrician. Pretty soon the man in charge called us over, he wanted to have a conference with everyone. Oh no, what now?

This is what he said, "We've checked the walls, and they are pretty bad. Do you have another place you could possibly stay for a few days?"

 ..... seriously.....

It looks like they will have to replace the wall behind the toilet and vanity. We still aren't sure what is going to happen with us, whether we can stay here, or if the school has a place to put us up, or there was talk of a hotel. But I find it all a little humorous, and crazy. So much has gone wrong in the last two days, I'm just waiting to see what happens next.

I've decided I needed to take a few pictures to show you what else we've been doing.


They placed the blower so that is faces the toilet. We didn't think much of it until we walked in the bathroom and our toilet paper was flying around and unrolling. We've learned to tuck it behind the toilet seat to keep it safe. I say we need a Cottonelle roll cover.

In all of this, I was craving some kind of chocolate so I made no-bakes. They are wonderful straight from the fridge, we have been trying to find anything we can to cool us down. Pretty much, we've spent the day in bathing suits because its the coolest thing we have. Also, thank you Joe and Jen for the popsicles, I don't know what I would have done without them.

Tyler has used the time to clean up a bit, he cleaned up our porch and found a great way to hang the swings we got for Christmas last year.

Sorry this is a long post, it has been an eventful day.