What’s that smell?

We bought our home as a new build back in January of 2007, little by little we have been learning that our builder or at least his employees did not seem to have any attention to detail or care enough to fix their mistakes.  Of course many of the things that have gone wrong have been on us since the builder files bankruptcy with each neighborhood he builds, how convenient for him. The newest thing has actually been going on for some time but we never realized what exactly it was until we just recently had a septic system issue.

We have this small pantry closet just off of the kitchen.  I use it for unconventional fabrics, batting, folded up boxes, just junk stuff because we have enough cabinets in the kitchen to hold everything else. At one time I had stored a large bag of Alpaca roving a lady down the road had given me. I ended up taking it out because every now and then you could smell a musty smell when you opened the door, we thought the roving because it still needed another wash had been the source of the smell. The smell never went away but we always thought it was from maybe the items in the closet soaking up the Alpaca wool.

Our sink in the kitchen kept backing up so my husband kept plunging the sick, big mistake we have found. Then the septic backed up in to toilet in the half bath off the kitchen. We had the septic guys come out and they pumped the septic and were on their way. After they left we flushed the toilet downstairs and it all came up, the problem was worse then an over full septic tank. So the guy told us what we could do to fix the clog. My husband got to do the dirty work and it was dirty. We were able to remove the clog and thought once again our problem was solved. It was not solved.

We still had this horrible smell coming from the sink area. After posting on Facebook about it, Kathy Schmitd was nice enough to ask her husband, who is a plumber, about it and he said it was most likely the studor vent under the sink that needed replacing. He was right. After waiting for Friday payday, a long stinky, cold wait (we left the windows open downstairs). Our handy friend and neighbor was able to replace the piece in about 3 minutes. It took care of the smell from under the sink.  Problem solved – right?

Wrong. My husband mentioned Saturday that when he opened the pantry door the smell was really bad, maybe some got trapped in there from when the sink was stinking. I opened the door before work last night and about fell out it was so bad. Just like from under the sink. How could that much be trapped in that little closet. Well, after I went to work last night my husband got a little curious and started poking around in the closet, he knew their was a plumbing pipe in the wall next to the closet. And guess what he found.

Yep, apparently the knucklehead who installed the closet shelves screwed into the plumbing pipe while hanging them. When we had the backup it  pushed the screw out and soaked the drywall. My husband tore out the drywall that was wet and looked through to the floor and under the house and there was no more leakage. As soon as he covered the hole in the pipe the smell was gone. But I told my husband I am willing to bet that the other 3 shelf screws are probably screwed into the pipe also, they were just too high for the backup to reach. So we will be getting this fixed this coming payday. I feel like we are rebuilding this house sometimes.

We keep thinking we are going to be able to get the kids some Christmas presents when the next payday rolls around but something else happens. We now have a non-working dishwasher, non-working microwave oven, broken garage door and a busted pipe.  We all need to go to the doctor or dentist for some reason or another.  On the bright side, our “million dollar” puppy is healed, and our septic is clean and our sink is fixed, so I should be happy with all of that. I am frustrated but I am not down, at least not right at this second. We all have troubles and woes and they all will pass. I am trying to keep a happy heart but sometimes it is such a struggle. I will just try to keep laughing about it because if I get serious I might never laugh again!

On a lighter note, last year I  traced out hundreds of holiday stitcheries so I always have something to stitch on. I think I am finally on the last 50 or so for Christmas. I should have written on the back of them who they were by but I did not so now I cannot remember what designer they are from. Sorry about that. I finished a couple last night and I know the first one is from Buttermilk Basin but I am not sure about the second.

I did want to mention the fabric in the Santa stitchery. It was part of a fat quarter bundle I had ordered years ago from a company called Cherrywood Fabrics. The fabric is all hand dyed and the most wonderful texture you can find. I had a difficult time ever using the fabric but little by little it gets used now.  It is quite pricey but that was the days I used credit cards like a mad woman, now I would definitely get it if I had something special to do or if I wanted to use it in place of wool, it has a suede like feel to it. I actually have a wool project I am doing for someone and I am using some other pieces from the bundle in place of the background wool. It is going to be quite lovely.

Well, I need to get stitching! I hope you had a great day and found some stitching time!! And remember – do not plunge your clogged sinks if you have a studor vent on it, bad to do!!!

~ Jennifer ~