House in Progress Diary

It's us against the weather

This isn't living. It's survival.

How did vintage bungalow people do it?

I mean, sure. Their windows opened back then. But they had petticoats too.

Yesterday, the thermometer topped 93 degrees outdoors. I don't even want to think of it indoors. Meanwhile, for the hottest part of the day, we (2 humans, a cat and a dog) huddled against the A/C in the bedroom with the door closed and prowled around at night. Until we all fell asleep at 4 a.m. That's when we found out that contractors don't work when the rest of us do...they are tireless.

Because the phone rang at 7:30 am. It was a lovely man, someone who is a real trooper to even come see the place because he usually works somewhere in the southwest suburbs. It was the Saturday after a holiday and he was ringing us up to tell us that he'd be out to look at the masonry at 9:00 am. And we would have answered the phone usually. But this was after the rainstorm drama.

You see, when we finally fell into bed, there was a rainstorm. Around 4 am. And ALL of the windows upstairs, as well as the only ones which will open on the first floor, were open. Being blessed with the ability to hear the cat cough up a hairball even in the middle of my REM cycle (but not with the ability to hear my husband telling me to "shove over", hmmm), I sprang bolt upright, with both feet aiming for the floor and landed on the dog.

I sprinted around calling, "A! A!" at the top of my lungs. But the poor man was exhausted and besides, didn't everyone tell us that lathe and plaster was magnificent at killing sound?

It is.

After I groped around without my glasses and managed to find the OLD towels with which to mop up, I realized with horror that it wasn't just the rain pouring water onto our sills.

The ancient A/C from Montgomery Ward had been propped up in the window with a few boards of wood to tilt the unit INTO the house. So ALL of the condensation from 72 hours of A/C was finally running INTO the bedroom.

Our A/C runneth over, so to speak. Well.

At 4:30 am, with the choice of stuffing a load of rags between the sill and the A/C unit OR sleeping in that room with NO A/C and no open windows, I chose the former, muttering "Worse things have been happening to this house since 1914. I'm going to bed."

Which is why we didn't get the phone at 7:30 am. And why we slept past the visit from the mason. And we are very sorry. And we won't let it happen again.

Posted by jeanne on July 5, 2003 at 8:20 PM