Wet Floors. New Floors.

Well, the trip to Home Depot was successful. We wound up getting a little over 300 square feet of new, different laminate flooring.

Of course, it really wasn't that easy. I've got issues, man. As a recovering credit card junkie, I get pretty jittery spending anything over $500 dollars. I get buyers remorse, post cash-partum depression or whatever you want to call it. So, basically, when confronted with having to spend any amount of money these days, I become a difficult asshole. A passive aggressive difficult asshole. At least I'm aware of it though and try to rein it in.

Like I was saying, it wasn't that easy. I made the trip reluctantly and apprehensively. Reluctantly because I really wanted to be at home playing Desert Combat and configuring all sorts of different cool-mo-dean super high powered gaming PC rigs that I might want to gift myself. Apprehensively because I know money was going to be spent. Clarisa, when it comes to non-clothes shopping - shops like a man. She walks in and bang, she knows what she wants and buys it. Knowing this, for me the buyers remorse can actually kick in before the purchase.

Yeah, I'm pretty flaked out when it comes to spending money. But I'm not a tightwad. Its just that I flake out and hem and haw about it.

Naturally, I was hoping to get away with just buying a few replacement boards. One box at most. Maybe two. Clarisa, having hated the floor since we moved in, wanted to go for the gusto and just replace everything. We had the money, and its not rocket science installing laminate flooring - so what the heck?! I managed not to drive her from Home Depot in tears and we got the new flooring.

Good thing we did too, because when we got home we pulled up a few boards where we thought the water was, and then we pulled up a few more and then a few more until we'd cleared close to 200 hundred sq feet of board. Water everywhere. Obviously, a bigger problem than anticipated, but not really that surprising in retrospect.

There was even water under there from the great pipe bursting incident from this winter. Argh, that was disgusting. Its amazing there aren't more problems - the boards looked fine but underneath there was a layer of gunk and ooze Swamp Thing would love.

Right now the floor is ripped up, furniture all moved around (the bedroom has become the dining room) and we've got to bring in the flooring and let it acclimate for three days. Then we can start putting the new stuff down. In the meantime the place can dry out, too. It sure needs it.

But while I'm putting stuff down, I'm thinking "out". We've got to move out of here. Anywhere within an hour's train ride of the city and I think I'm game.