Sand and Water: no, not the Beach.

Mom and my twin sisters came to Fargo Friday to help get the NW bedroom ready to be occupied. Mom primed the new walls and painted the ceiling. We mixed texture sand into the primer to replicate the look of the plaster walls in the room.

I tried with the textured primer just long enough to realize that it wasn't easy to work with, then left for work. Mom did a great job working with it and when I came home from work the walls were done and ready for paint. I know I'm not going to get off the hook that easy for all of my texturing. Thanks Mom!

So there was the sand... but where's the water?

Coming in from the living room ceiling. Thats where.

It rained pretty steadily Saturday and water was coming into the house from the bad flashing around the chimney. I woke up that morning to the sound of water dripping from the ceiling about a foot in front of the fireplace. Perfect way to start off your day. I threw a bucket under the drip and took a look at the wall above the fireplace. Water had collected into pockets behind the pain and had started leaking down onto the mantle.

I grabbed a 3in. scraper from the coffee table (one's always within reach at my place) and used it to drain the water from these pockets behind the paint. That lead to pulling out a piece of drenched drywall tape, then to just scraping off all of the wet joint compound and crumbling plaster. This photo just about illustrates how easily it all fell off; that's the 3in scraper under there!

This is what I'm left with:

Just about turns your stomach, huh? I wish you could smell it. Imagine old, deteriorating plaster and joint compound soaked again and again with rainwater. It smells similar to a very damp basement. But in this case the basement smell is coming from the living room where I sleep. I'll be calling the roofing company tomorrow.

It's funny this never came up in the house inspection. Maybe I'll give him a call too.