Why My Allergies Wouldn't Quit

I used to suffer from pretty serious seasonal allergies about twice a year (sometimes more often).  All that miraculously stopped once I became pregnant with my son about 3 years ago. And then a few weeks ago, I started getting sick. I thought it was allergies, but I felt so bad I figured it had to be something else. And then I threw out some old, apparently moldy cushions from the dining chairs I've been working on (more on those later) and I started to feel better. But my allergies were definitely still acting up.  And then one night while my husband and son were outside mowing the lawn, I walked through the bonus room barefoot and felt... wet carpet.  Suddenly it dawned on me why our bonus room had started smelling the way it did before we bought the place aka before we ripped out and replaced the old carpet and padding.  The main plumbing for our master bathroom shares an interior wall with the bonus room. That's right -- there was a leaking pipe.  We set up fans and opened the doors to 1. air the room out and 2. dry out the carpet.  My husband also cut into the wall to check for mold. 

The section of drywall that was effected was so wet it pretty much just crumbled in his hands as he was cutting it out.  And then, to add insult to injury, when he got that section of drywall out, he found siding. And not just any siding... 

 gross, wet, moldy siding.

 We've been using this room for storage, but fortunately had just finished putting together our shed (again, something I'll talk more about later), so we had room to start moving everything out.  At least enough to actually work on the problem at hand.

how the bonus room looked the first night after we discovered the leak

 My poor husband had to crawl under the house about 7 times by himself...

 The first time he wasn't actually alone... while I was taking these pictures, I noticed the little feet scampering through...

Tiger, exploring the crawl space while he has the opportunity

It took a LOT of coaxing to get that little guy to come back out. I have no idea what he thought was so great about being down there.

The good news was that the leaking pipe happened to be near a vent out to the carport.  So even though Peter would have to crawl from the office all the way to the pipe every time, I could sit outside in the carport ready to hand him whatever tools or towels he needed.

the vent I pried open to access Peter in the crawlspace

Peter lying on his side, working on the pipe

prime photo op

our little guy passing tools to Peter through the vent

In total, we made two trips to Home Depot and had the water shut off for almost a day, but the leak is repaired and we have some new tools (literally and figuratively) for solving leaking pipes in the future. Repairing the wall in the bonus room is still a work in progress and I'll do an update on that when we get to that point. It's a good thing we were already planning on painting that room after we get all our things moved into the shed.