A Few Steps Back

You know that expression, "When it rains, it pours"? Well, no one ever told us that "When it pours, it kind of monsoons, for several days." Sigh.

You may or may not have heard/read (by text or Facebook stalking) about Lanie's run-in with some stingy insect (we think) on Thursday. It led to the allergic reaction of all allergic reactions. Day 1 her face was so swollen she appeared to have furry elephantitus. Day 2 most of the swelling went down, but the hives were everywhere and her eye was so puffy she looked like a little kid with pink eye. We're now on Day 3, and while she's definitely better, there are still horrible hives everywhere, some puffiness around her *other* eye (which she scratched enough this morning that she cut herself under her eye, yeesh), and she's so miserably itchy, she's scratched of chunks of fur all over herself. Poor dog. Pathetic. I won't embarrass her further by posting a picture. Just use your imaginations, and exercise sympathy. She's so uncomfortable!

So that's the raining (although, when it comes to Lanie's health, it's really not normal "rain" anymore, we're pretty much in a constant state of thunderstorms...) and the pouring. The monsoons have struck the Home Sweet Schwab where it hurts: our new floors.

Last night Dave noticed that our floors, in a small area near the dining room table, were buckling. He concluded that it must be due to the humidity we experienced briefly when Chicago thought it might not be winter forever last week. We both got upset, but sprung into action. We shut all the doors and vowed to sweat out the summer so as not to encourage more ruin to our flooring, and Dave called the other flooring guy (the guy we didn't use, who in retrospect is who we should have used) who suggested that we start by setting up fans and a dehumidifier to see if pulling out the moisture would allow the wood to settle again. So, that's what we did:

But then, we realized that it wasn't the humidity. In the air duct you can see exposed there to the left of the last picture, there is a leaky hose:

And now we have a nice little area of ruined flooring that will likely have to come up and be replaced. The good news is, worse things can happen! Also in the good news department, it's not the humidity, so we can stop kicking ourselves for not buying laminate flooring. Finally in the good news department, hopefully not all of the flooring will have to come up, and we have left-over boxes from the original install, so if we have to buy more, it'll only be a box or so at most. Bad news: this just stinks.

But... you learn! As we've said all along, this whole thing is really just a great adventure. We've never done this before, and next time we'll approach every step differently, having experienced some of the mistakes and pitfalls of first-time home ownership in this place. Onward!