rats and receipts

Our record rains of a couple of weeks ago have given way to record cold (20 degrees last night). Cars are sliding right off the roads, so Matt stayed home from work and put in some hours pulling down the ceiling in the corner bedroom.

Why would anyone want to so disturb their bedroom ceiling, you might be wondering. Well. This is the ceiling that was coming down in large and heavy peices by itself, thanks to the lack of wallpaper. So Matt was actually just helping it along, hoping to finish what Kwaku & co. had started the day before.

By the way, it was dirty. There's a kind of black dusty dirt in hundred-year-old walls that is unlike anything I've ever seen. It looks like this:


So there Matt was, pulling plaster and lath off the ceiling. When lo and behold, a little bit of something sticking out. "Hmm," thinks Matt, "looks like someone put in some insulation. Insulation is good." A few more lath boards and down falls a big clump of black fur. "Hmm," thinks Matt, "not insulation after al—" and suddenly a giant rats' nest falls on his head.

Okay, not actually on his head. Only right in front of him. But still, yikes. So he yelled to me, and I came up and we looked at it in amazement for some time. Then I got the camera and took a picture of it, and of the gnawed hole in the ceiling through which they came and went:




Documentation completed, Matt went back to work and I went back to playing with Audrey downstairs. Then I hear Matt yell again, something like "You gotta see this," and I think, oh, no, he's found another nest. Sounds bigger. Probably racoons. Or maybe bats? Or an infestation of centipedes? I don't actually remember exactly what I thought. But it was something like "more of same" plus "something worse." So I took a bit more time coming upstairs.

But there was Matt, holding up something paper and check-sized that had come fluttering down from behind the lath:



This is a receipt dated June 17, 1912 (the year the house was built), written out to C.B. Nibloch or Niblock for a payment of $3 "on account of dues to The Taxpayers' League of Seattle," beginning June 17 1912 to September 17 1912, signed by Lee J. Brawley, Treasurer.

fortune

Message received via fortune cookie: "Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you."

fenced in

Over the past several weeks Matt has built a beautiful fence in the backyard:

It's been cold and rainy, not great outdoor working conditions. He's had some help from my Dad, and I've helped level a couple of posts, but to be honest, it's just not fence-building weather around here. Imagine the party it would have been, had we waited until next spring. Yes sirree.

For the record, this fence is exactly six feet high, and the retaining wall just under four feet. We go by the books, people.

what? more about the sewer?

Every plumber I've met with would attack this sewer thing in a different way. Through the street. Through the front yard. By excavating the whole side yard, by hand, by machine. By replacing the pipe section by section. By using trenchless pipe-bursting technology. I've been told the blockage is 18 feet, 11 feet, and 10 feet underground, and that it is 40 feet, 80 feet, and 100 feet out. We have bids coming in ranging from about $17K (for the entire resewering of our home) to over $40K. So, hmm. And also, how on earth are people supposed to pay for these things? What is homeowners insurance for if it doesn't cover stuff like this? I ask you.

What we've learned:

• Our downspouts drain into our sewer line, which would explain why this happened during heavy rain, and which is no longer permitted by the city. (Hi there, city!)
  
• The intentional-looking hole (as opposed to the various odd little holes) in the basement is a drain for a missing utility sink, and also drains into the sewer, and is our lowest open point in the line, and thus burbles up nastiness during aforementioned rain.
  
• Suspicious and cryptic notations on official sewer maps (of course there's such a thing) speak of prior lines dug up in the front of the house but left uninspected.
  
• Our house's septic tank was abandoned and side sewer installed in 1926. Happy 80th birthday, sewer. We hate you.

On a brighter note, Kwaku, Jason and Jason have begun rewiring the house. These nice guys clearly like what they do, and what they're doing clearly needed to be done: Outlets are not supposed to be hot to the touch. No. And today Jason reminded me about the possibility of finishing the basement for rental income. Basement apartment. With the sewage properly contained, this would make a lot of sense.

This blog has reached new heights of dull.

city spectacle

Four guys from the city public utilities department came out with their giant snake truck and their even more giant Vactor truck and their robot camera truck. They met in front of the house, blocked off the street, opened a manhole and proceeded to create a great spectacle. A lone plumber who had just been in to give us a quote decided to stay and hang out with them, to be a part of all the action.

It took a while. City guys all agreed there was something down there. The hundred-year-old street trees nearby got many speculative looks. City prediction: roots.

The robot camera went in last, after everything else had been done. A guy lowered it down on a grappling hook to the depth of the main line, into which it crept. It sent up video of a shining clean main line. Then it turned its head to look up our side sewer. Which was a solid wall of roots and soil. It looked entirely like the bottom of a rootbound houseplant lifted out of its pot and shoved up our sewer line.

For the past several days this whole sewer thing has felt like that last back-breaking straw. An unlivable house, some tens of thousands of dollars to replace a section of sewer pipe so that our toilets will flush and sinks will drain. Our plans for renovating/remodeling pretty much shot, as all available money must now go literally and (it feels like) figuratively down the drain.

18 feet under

We are feeling a bit down, over here.

A pair of plumbers sloshed into our basement yesterday to run a camera snake down the sewer line. Camera snake got stuck way out under the street in front of the house, 18 feet underground. Barely got camera snake back. The plumbers guessed that the repair will cost us about $30,000: breaking up the street, excavating a giant hole, bracing it ("dropping a box"), sending the excavated soil out to be sanitized (regulation?), plus the actual fixing, etc.

We've asked the city to make sure the blockage isn't in the city sewer main, which they would be responsible for, but from all we've seen so far it seems unlikely. So we are waiting for an official estimate from the plumbing company, and a few other plumbing companies as well. And, in the meantime, not flushing toilets or showering. It is all bad smells and sticker shock over here. (Audrey, I should mention, is fine with not bathing.)

house smells awful, many things ruined

"Daddy said, there's crap all over the floor."
"What?"
"He said, there's crap all over the floor."
"Crap?"
"Yes."

Audrey and I are having this unfortunate conversation because of a comment Matt just shouted from the basement, where he is shoveling, well, crap into a contractor-strength garbage bag. Audrey is not entirely certain about what crap is, or why it would need shoveling, of all places, in the basement.

We came home tonight to a basement flooded with raw sewage. It's been raining a lot, and we had already found a miniature river—cute, really, it was so tiny, but with such a strong current—running down the basement wall and into a smallish hole in the floor. What we didn't know (because we hadn't been down there for a few days) was that sewage was burbling up out of a different hole and accumulating in a stinky mess under the 6-mil plastic sheeting we had laid down. To protect our stuff. Ha! But now, ick.

It's freezing cold, but I've got the heat turned off because I don't want to spread sewer gases from the basement into the rest of the house (furnace is adjacent to sewage lake in basement). And now we can stop saying, "oh, let's bring up the [whatever]," because the [whatever] has been soaking in feces and must now be incinerated. Maybe we could burn the [whatever] to heat the house? What do you think of that idea?

Thankfully, we lived in the Twin Gables for six years so raw sewage is old hat to us. Give that building a good rain and you're pretty much guaranteed ankle-deep sewage, either in the basement, the courtyard, or your own bathtub. So this evening Matt shoveled up what he could. We agreed that it smelled very bad, and that it would be very nice to get it all cleaned up. But that perhaps it was better left to professionals. I will call a plumber in the morning. And now, here is the grossest picture you will ever see. You're welcome.

up to code

Came home today to a little gathering at the back of the retaining wall. Neighbors Matt and Shannon, and a man and women I didn't know. Obviously in conversation, focused intently on the wall and skeleton fence. Me: sinking feeling. First thought: I should go over there and be neighborly and find out what's up. Second thought: Those two people are property attorneys and our neighbors are going to sue us for that corner. Third thought: Fuck it. Whatever they're doing, I don't need to make it any easier for them. So Audrey and dogs and I went into the house.

Then, fifteen minutes later the man and woman are in our front yard, sighting down the property line from the stake at the northwest corner of the lot. A few minutes later I look out the window again and see the man getting into a City of Seattle car. Civil servant, not lawyer. So I walk out and say hello through his open window, and tell him I noticed him at the back of our property when I drove up, and is there anything he can tell me?

"Well," he says, looking uncomfortable, "we were talking about your retaining wall and fence and whether they're up to code."

And there he stops, and I actually have to say, "Did we do something wrong?" to get him to continue. Which he does without looking me in the eye, while inching his car forward.

And what he says then is something to the effect of "As far as I can see, it looks okay." Something noncommittal and disclaimered. While rolling up his window.

So I go back in to take the dogs out to the back yard (critical to make many trips to the backyard with un-housebroken new dog). Neighbor Matt is still out there, so I ask him what's going on. He tells me someone complained about their parking situation. I tell him that the city guy just told me that they were looking at our retaining wall and fence, hello, discrepancy. But he has a whole story about it being a complaint against his guest house, and blah blah blah. So, whatever.

load-bearing wallpaper

With this fabulous new thingy called a Wagner power steamer, the wallpaper is coming off in big sticky sheets, glue and everything, leaving cleanish yellow skim-plastered walls. A few hours per wall. We're nearly done with the living room downstairs.

Upstairs, different story: wallpaper = structural integrity. Underneath that wallpaper is no nice skim-coated layer of fine plaster, just the rough plaster on top of the lath. This stuff is actually mixed with hay, or something haylike, and it crumbles easily. So easily that the ceiling in fact fell off after the wallpaper was gone in the nice big corner bedroom.

Maybe we can live with the peeling, stained, cigarette-smoke-smelling wallpaper upstairs after all?