The One Where We Are Just A Little Bit Soggy...

So, we foolishly believed that we were near the end of The Great Remodel.

Have you ever heard the old saying "Two steps forward, one step back"?

It sums things up fairly nicely at the moment.


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We have had a rather rainy spring this year; one recent week our little corner of The Greater Metro received more than 7 inches of rain in less than 7 days.

The weather is slowing our forward progress on the exterior of the house. There is still a great deal of painting to be done, and the forms for the final concrete work have not even been set. Our driveway will have to be torn out and replaced; it has finally failed under the weight of the 30 yard dumpsters that have occupied half of it since last fall, and the private patio, and the sidewalk that will completely encircle the house are all on hold, due to the rain.

But finally, the crew finally got to begin caulking and priming the exterior. I noticed that they were using the new faucet on the back of the house to clean brushes and equipment, but didn't think too much of it until the wee hours of the morning when I awoke to hear water running... somewhere.

I sat quietly on the edge of the bed, loathe to wake The Wrench. Between everything going on here with My Mom, the remodel, and the fact that things have been less than rosy at work, I knew he was well past exhausted; he needed the sleep badly.

I listened carefully, and then sighed with relief, remembering seeing the crew cleaning brushes using the new faucet. That plumbing runs through the walls in the addition to the house where our bedroom is; in my half-awake state it made perfect sense that one of the guys didn't shut off the faucet completely, and what I was hearing had to be the faucet running outside.

It was 3:00 am. The yard as we knew it is gone; it is a victim of the remodel in every sense of the word. What little grass remains is around the edges; the back yard is a sea of mud, and the front yard has been torn and chewed up by heavy equipment. My "mud shoes" had gotten so caked from the previous evenings tour of the yard that they were still outside the front door. It's too dangerous to walk out there in bare feet; there are still too many nails, staples, and bits of construction trash to even consider a quick sprint to the spigot.

So, I decided to go back to sleep, and first thing in the morning I would dig out another pair of shoes to sacrifice to the muck and mud... and I would go turn the spigot off after the sun came up.

After all, I could tell that it was just trickling through the pipes. There was nothing *really* to worry about.

Fast forward to 9:00 am. The Wrench, bless his heart, decided to let me sleep in, since it was a Saturday. I padded through the house, looking for another pair of shoes I could sacrifice to the yard. TW was at the far end of the new hallway, and as I started walking toward him, I was telling him about the faucet, and how I needed to find a pair of shoes to...

:::squish:::
:::squish:::
:::squish:::

I looked down, and water was literally bubbling up between the floorboards. Of the new floating wood floor.

Shit.

It wasn't the faucet, after all...