Aaaaa, this house! It's going to kill me!

We spent all day getting shelves and bunk beds so we could unpack and find the floor. It's nice when your older kids are old enough to put furniture together--the 15YO spent hours setting up a wooden bunk bed upstairs. Which we should probably prop, since I'm pretty sure enough kids leaning over the edge could flip it on this slanty of a floor. One bunk bed won't show up until Friday at the store, though, which means a few more days of extremely cramped and messy quarters in that room. Also, we can't get some of the dresser stuff out of the living room until then. A repair guy spent hours over here today, replacing the hot outlet (which was completely live and broken inside the wall), fixing the lights in the basement, and gluing a cabinet door. He's coming back at 8 am tomorrow to deal with the washing machine drain pipe. We hooked the washer up right. However, it appears the wastewater pipe of the house down there is plugged, because instead of draining into the pipe, the water bubbles up and spurts out the top. Fabulous.

We've priced and done a bit of research on dehumidifiers, too. But I think we might need our 13YO to do some more research so he can count it for a much-needed merit badge. And a writer friend told me about an "odor sponge" that claims to eliminate even "the smell of human decay." So I think we'll be ordering that as well...

But just as I was starting to think I might settle for uneasy but non-warlike terms, my 11YO got in the tub, and suddenly there was a real, live waterfall over the dining room table below. The floor slants very steeply up there, and the tub is set into a counter top that is nearly as high as the sink. So when you shower, any water that hits the back wall drains to the edge of the counter and over to the floor. She had a ton of water on the countertop, but--very little on the floor. SO WHERE IS IT COMING FROM?? This is the only bathing facility in the house, and just two days ago they had to pull out a super-duper plumbing expert because it was 100% plugged. ARGH!!!

I would like to unpack and get curtains for all the windows and think about furniture (we gave our couch away when we left Idaho). But a part of me keeps holding back. Because what if the house turns out to be truly uninhabitable, and we have to pack up all over again and leave??? (And if so, how would we ever find something else??)

I feel like we've moved in with Sirius Black's mum and her lovely, lovely house.