When It Rains...

...it comes in through the bathroom ceiling.

I made a passing reference to our house collapsing around us last week and I was only sort of joking.  Here are things that are happening.

1) We have a flat roof on our addition.  Both Dr. BB and I were suspicious of this roof from the very beginning (for a variety of reasons) but the home inspector AND two roofers we had come look it last fall told us it was fine and that we were being paranoid over nothing.  So when we woke up last week after a heavy rain and there was water coming from the light fixture in our bathroom, I guess neither of us were surprised, so much as ticked off. We now are the cool house with a tarp on the roof.  Roofers are coming later this week. I hope.

2) We had some issues with our front porch and we paid to have it replaced last year, but then snow came early and we sat around all winter with a rotting porch. They came! They fixed it!  But now we have to wait a month or two (via the instructions of the men who installed it) to paint it. We are now the cool house with half a painted porch.

3) We had four new basement windows installed. This actually is a good thing because the old ones were single-pane (I accidentally typed "single-pain" and that is true, too) and one was literally held together with duct tape. I mentioned that these would need to get fixed during the home inspection and was told that I was being paranoid and that the windows were fine. Well, that's not entirely accurate based on the fact that it got below 50 degrees in the basement over the winter.  Anyway, these basement windows have been in the plan for a long time, but way to see another few thousand dollars leak out of our savings account. I guess better now than in the long term in our heating bills.

4) Shortly after the rain in the ceiling incident, Dr. BB noticed Zelda the Cat stalking the back door like she was a real hunter.  It turns out that we had dozens of tiny ants marching all along our back wall.  We called the bug guy (we have a bug guy - his name is Jim and if you live in southeastern Wisconsin, I can give you his number) and he came to see us today.  And that is good because my husband was stalking the mud room with Raid and I was starting to worry he was going to poison the cat with his willynilly spraying.  $85 and now our house is impervious to bugs. I hope.

5) The plumbing in the upstairs bathroom is old. This causes some problems with the flow between the sink and the tub with disgusting water coming up from the tub whenever we used the sink. We had a plumber out and he basically did the best he could, but told us we needed to vent the sink and that would involve cutting open the wall. Our long-term plans have always included a renovation of the configuration of the rooms upstairs, including modernizing this bathroom, but this might have moved those plans up to medium-term.  Although, honestly, I don't know where we'd find the money.

Meanwhile, we can at least use the upstairs bathroom again.

So, we're the house with an ant infestation, a tarp on the roof, and a half-painted front porch.  I say we just put a bathtub out front and call it a day.