I've often thought that the title Urban Camping no longer applies to this here blog, what with the major renovations having already taken place and the fact that we have a working HVAC system now. And yet, this house continues to surprise me. Like at three o'clock this morning, when we had, according to the local weathermen, torrential downpours. Three inches in an hour kind of rain. Previously when Richmond had terrible rain like this, the ceiling fell through in one of the second floor rooms; that room is now our bedroom. Michael had been worried about it leaking in there, even after getting a new roof and all the repairs made, because of some other minor issues that haven't been fixed yet. But we'd survived several bouts of rain since then, and so far, no leaks.

Until last night. I woke up to the rain hitting the air conditioning unit and after not going right back to sleep, I got up to use the bathroom. When I walked back into the bedroom, Michael was also up and standing by the window. I thought he'd gotten up to see what was going on outside. Instead, he's standing there with his hands cupped, asking me to get him a bucket. Oh, the sense of dread that filled me then. It wasn't a bad leak, just a slow drip, and Michael noticed that the leak got much worse any time the wind blew. I was more worried that I may not get back to sleep because of the drip, drip, drip than about the bigger issue here: there's water coming into our house. But this isn't something that we're terribly worried about; we haven't had a big rain like that in a while, and the house has stood up to normal rain just fine. There's siding we need to have replaced on the dormer upstairs, which is how the rain was getting in, and it's one of the many things left on the to-do list. We'll just be taking care of this item sooner than we thought.

Speaking of our new bedroom, I never posted pictures of the finished product. So here's a look at what the second floor of the house looks like, keeping in mind that we're about halfway done with this floor.

At the top of the stairs is the old bathroom that's been gutted. We have a piece of sheet rock blocking it to keep the cats out.


Kirin found a way in a few times (i.e., she squeezed her fat self through a slightly larger opening). Michael didn't believe me when I told him the gap needed to be smaller. So she'd get in there and crawl around under the floor, with all the exposed insulation around, which might account for the sneezing problem she's developed recently.

Here's the floor that Michael fell through:


Moving along, here's the hallway; the bathroom is to your left, the stairs going up and going down to your right.


Next is what used to be the upstairs kitchen. This is our work room for now, as you can tell, and will one day be another bedroom.


Now we come to the bathroom; this used to be a hallway that was just wasted space in the house.



And here's our bedroom.


(sorry for the ironing board; I didn't feel like moving it for the shot)



And here's the view from the bathroom, looking back toward the hallway and stairs:


Oh yes, those are more green stairs. I just can't escape them.