Emergency Writing Commissions - Burst Pipes
Originally posted by luckweaver at Emergency Writing Commissions - Burst Pipes
Well, the header is the cliffnotes version of the mess that I am currently dealing with in my house, and of course, I would have to break my... break from LJ with bad news. Jared is offshore, as well, so I'm currently on my own, in a house with no central heating or running water. I promise there's a cheerier post coming on the tails of this one, and if you don't want to hear about my miserable life, feel totally un-judged if you keep on scrolling. Details under the cut.
[The Long Answer]This isn't going to be a terribly coherent post, I'm afraid. I was out of the house from Thursday to Tuesday, as I was invited to the bi-weekly Pathfinder roleplay in the city, and Jared was going to be offshore and an indeterminable time; the boat was jerking him around a little, and he wound up going out a week after he was meant to, and since he has on-call work that was a week's pay... bleh, a different complain for a different day. I got home on Tuesday to find that not only had all of my pipes frozen, but the situation was so bad that the toilet bowls were both solid blocks of ice, as were the cisterns. As I have no experience of this sort of thing happening, not being from Canada, I called my in-laws and did everything I was told to do. Open what taps weren't frozen solid so they could drizzle, put the two space heaters down by the water tank in the basement and in the bathroom, started a fire in the living room, and waited. The friend who took me home took me out to buy bottled water and a long-burning log, and I waited.
The waiting ended about 2 hours later when I started to hear the sound of fast-running water. Fast-running water turned out to be the supply pipe disconnecting - completely blowing the nut - from the sink upstairs, thus spraying hot water at high speed and high pressure everywhere. I managed to get the tube at least shoved back into place, but soaked myself to the bone in the process. The water stripped paint from the bathroom wall, and flooded the whole bathroom in about an inch of water and half of the upstairs corridor as well. After getting that under control, everything seemed to be going okay until about an hour later when I noticed that there was a lot of water leaking through the drywall of the ceiling in the living room. It being 2am by this point, I didn't want to call my in-laws but did manage to get a plumber who stayed at the end of the phoneline for an hour despite the time of day, talking me through how to get my water fully disconnected so that the situation didn't get any worse.
Until my in-laws turned up last night, that seemed to be the worst of it. A possible burst pipe, singular, leading up to the bathroom upstairs. Well, there is that leak, but there's apparently also one or two others, as cutting through the drywall to find the leak, my father in law found a torrent of water, despite the fact that the water had been turned off for more than 12 hours. This eventually led to having to tear down half of my living room ceiling, and apparently given the amount of water it's a miracle it hadn't already collapsed under the weight of the water anywhere. (Needless to say, even with my father in law dragging the biggest pieces of drywall out onto the deck, the entire room is still covered in drywall dust and mud, and looks an awful mess. Not to mention the wood we had to hammer through in the initial attempt to find the pipes, and the hole in the drywall in the dining room where the hammer accidentally backed into it.)
Again, we couldn't find any actual broken pipes, so it looked as though the water might just have been from the mess upstairs. That is until we turned the water back on to find the leak, and noticed that there was water spraying into the downstairs bathroom from a small, burst pipe leading up to the bathroom sink. We got that under control, more or less, only to find that there was a lot of water running through, we think, the wall between the bathroom and the laundry room behind it, which by the time we got to it was underneath about an inch of water, much like the bathroom upstairs. (My friends had come over to use my washing machine, which obviously they hadn't done, but it looks as though they might have left the machine running by mistake because my father in law said the machine was trying to fill.) Cue, on top of the hole in the roof and the possible burst pipes, water damage in the carpet (which we were eventually going to pull up anyway, but that was a job for when we had more money).
I also found a few damp patches in our bedroom roof - I'm sleeping upstairs, at the moment, because it's easier to heat one small room with a propane tank rather than an entire house - but no major signs of flooding, knock on wood.
TL;DR is that due to the pipes freezing and then bursting, I have at least one burst pipe, possibly more. The entire house needs to be re-plumbed, as the copper pipes aren't really going to last any longer at this rate. The living room ceiling needs to be completely stripped and re-drywalled. The shower, sink and toilet all need replacing in the upstairs bathroom (especially the shower, as on top of everything else the dial was leaking uncontrollably and it was installed in such a way that we can't get at the stop-off switch). There's water-damaged carpet, and possibly also damaged wood (I'm praying that my beautiful living room hardwood floor is varnished well enough) that need replacing. We knew this house was going to be a fixer-upper, but the pipes have forced our hand and buggered the plans we had for this year so that repairs and everything else need to be done sooner, and more repairs than we initially knew.
On top of that, Jared's car is more than 10 years old and is almost completely dead. It has its MVI next month, and there is no way it is going to pass; nothing can dispute that. Without a car, Jared can't work, and we'd managed to find someone who could sell us a second-hand truck for a price we could just afford, but we can't afford the car - which we need to pay for next month - and the pipes, which basically need paid for ASAP. The truck was going to cost us around a grand, and the drywall and pipes are going to cost a couple hundred dollars, which with the state of the fishery this year and the fact that I can't yet work in Canada is money we just don't have. Which is why, as per the title, I'm taking commissions!
$1 per 100 words. Ie, if I write 100 words, you pay $1. If I write 800 words, you pay $8. If I write more than you pay for, of my own choice, you will not be charged extra. I will never write less than you pay for.
Guaranteed completed within 24 hours, unless you want something which is more than 5,000 words long in which case it might take a little bit longer.
I can write: Fanfiction (ask me about fandoms*) or Original Fiction (contact me with more details), Some Smut/kink, Some Violence
I cannot write: Hardcore Smut, Graphic Violence
If you’re interested in commissioning me, please send me an email at lamia.macdonald@gmail.com.
Signal boosts of this post, and this tumblr post, are appreciated, and if you want to donate but don't want a commission, my paypal address is the same as the email above.
* Fandoms I’ve written before/know well enough to write: Doctor Who, Torchwood, Supernatural, Merlin, Dragon Age, M*A*S*H, Sherlock, Harry Potter, DC Comics, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Comics, Firefly, Dr Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog, Outlander, Maximum Ride, Star Trek, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Welcome to Night Vale, Steven Universe, Gravity Falls. Feel free to ask me about other fandoms, especially ones you’ve seen me reblog.
Well, the header is the cliffnotes version of the mess that I am currently dealing with in my house, and of course, I would have to break my... break from LJ with bad news. Jared is offshore, as well, so I'm currently on my own, in a house with no central heating or running water. I promise there's a cheerier post coming on the tails of this one, and if you don't want to hear about my miserable life, feel totally un-judged if you keep on scrolling. Details under the cut.
[The Long Answer]This isn't going to be a terribly coherent post, I'm afraid. I was out of the house from Thursday to Tuesday, as I was invited to the bi-weekly Pathfinder roleplay in the city, and Jared was going to be offshore and an indeterminable time; the boat was jerking him around a little, and he wound up going out a week after he was meant to, and since he has on-call work that was a week's pay... bleh, a different complain for a different day. I got home on Tuesday to find that not only had all of my pipes frozen, but the situation was so bad that the toilet bowls were both solid blocks of ice, as were the cisterns. As I have no experience of this sort of thing happening, not being from Canada, I called my in-laws and did everything I was told to do. Open what taps weren't frozen solid so they could drizzle, put the two space heaters down by the water tank in the basement and in the bathroom, started a fire in the living room, and waited. The friend who took me home took me out to buy bottled water and a long-burning log, and I waited.
The waiting ended about 2 hours later when I started to hear the sound of fast-running water. Fast-running water turned out to be the supply pipe disconnecting - completely blowing the nut - from the sink upstairs, thus spraying hot water at high speed and high pressure everywhere. I managed to get the tube at least shoved back into place, but soaked myself to the bone in the process. The water stripped paint from the bathroom wall, and flooded the whole bathroom in about an inch of water and half of the upstairs corridor as well. After getting that under control, everything seemed to be going okay until about an hour later when I noticed that there was a lot of water leaking through the drywall of the ceiling in the living room. It being 2am by this point, I didn't want to call my in-laws but did manage to get a plumber who stayed at the end of the phoneline for an hour despite the time of day, talking me through how to get my water fully disconnected so that the situation didn't get any worse.
Until my in-laws turned up last night, that seemed to be the worst of it. A possible burst pipe, singular, leading up to the bathroom upstairs. Well, there is that leak, but there's apparently also one or two others, as cutting through the drywall to find the leak, my father in law found a torrent of water, despite the fact that the water had been turned off for more than 12 hours. This eventually led to having to tear down half of my living room ceiling, and apparently given the amount of water it's a miracle it hadn't already collapsed under the weight of the water anywhere. (Needless to say, even with my father in law dragging the biggest pieces of drywall out onto the deck, the entire room is still covered in drywall dust and mud, and looks an awful mess. Not to mention the wood we had to hammer through in the initial attempt to find the pipes, and the hole in the drywall in the dining room where the hammer accidentally backed into it.)
Again, we couldn't find any actual broken pipes, so it looked as though the water might just have been from the mess upstairs. That is until we turned the water back on to find the leak, and noticed that there was water spraying into the downstairs bathroom from a small, burst pipe leading up to the bathroom sink. We got that under control, more or less, only to find that there was a lot of water running through, we think, the wall between the bathroom and the laundry room behind it, which by the time we got to it was underneath about an inch of water, much like the bathroom upstairs. (My friends had come over to use my washing machine, which obviously they hadn't done, but it looks as though they might have left the machine running by mistake because my father in law said the machine was trying to fill.) Cue, on top of the hole in the roof and the possible burst pipes, water damage in the carpet (which we were eventually going to pull up anyway, but that was a job for when we had more money).
I also found a few damp patches in our bedroom roof - I'm sleeping upstairs, at the moment, because it's easier to heat one small room with a propane tank rather than an entire house - but no major signs of flooding, knock on wood.
TL;DR is that due to the pipes freezing and then bursting, I have at least one burst pipe, possibly more. The entire house needs to be re-plumbed, as the copper pipes aren't really going to last any longer at this rate. The living room ceiling needs to be completely stripped and re-drywalled. The shower, sink and toilet all need replacing in the upstairs bathroom (especially the shower, as on top of everything else the dial was leaking uncontrollably and it was installed in such a way that we can't get at the stop-off switch). There's water-damaged carpet, and possibly also damaged wood (I'm praying that my beautiful living room hardwood floor is varnished well enough) that need replacing. We knew this house was going to be a fixer-upper, but the pipes have forced our hand and buggered the plans we had for this year so that repairs and everything else need to be done sooner, and more repairs than we initially knew.
On top of that, Jared's car is more than 10 years old and is almost completely dead. It has its MVI next month, and there is no way it is going to pass; nothing can dispute that. Without a car, Jared can't work, and we'd managed to find someone who could sell us a second-hand truck for a price we could just afford, but we can't afford the car - which we need to pay for next month - and the pipes, which basically need paid for ASAP. The truck was going to cost us around a grand, and the drywall and pipes are going to cost a couple hundred dollars, which with the state of the fishery this year and the fact that I can't yet work in Canada is money we just don't have. Which is why, as per the title, I'm taking commissions!
$1 per 100 words. Ie, if I write 100 words, you pay $1. If I write 800 words, you pay $8. If I write more than you pay for, of my own choice, you will not be charged extra. I will never write less than you pay for.
Guaranteed completed within 24 hours, unless you want something which is more than 5,000 words long in which case it might take a little bit longer.
I can write: Fanfiction (ask me about fandoms*) or Original Fiction (contact me with more details), Some Smut/kink, Some Violence
I cannot write: Hardcore Smut, Graphic Violence
If you’re interested in commissioning me, please send me an email at lamia.macdonald@gmail.com.
Signal boosts of this post, and this tumblr post, are appreciated, and if you want to donate but don't want a commission, my paypal address is the same as the email above.
* Fandoms I’ve written before/know well enough to write: Doctor Who, Torchwood, Supernatural, Merlin, Dragon Age, M*A*S*H, Sherlock, Harry Potter, DC Comics, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Comics, Firefly, Dr Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog, Outlander, Maximum Ride, Star Trek, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Welcome to Night Vale, Steven Universe, Gravity Falls. Feel free to ask me about other fandoms, especially ones you’ve seen me reblog.