As they often do

My husband attempted a simple home repair project this weekend.

(Those of you who own homes are alrealy laughing. What were we thinking?)

Anyway, we have three (formerly four) cats. The male we have now has had urinary tract problems, therefore when he used to get infections he'd pee wherever was convenient. The old man kitty we had then had to hit those same spots, until there were some corners that were simply horrible. Cat urine will soak into the padding and the floorboards, and after that no amount of cleaning will kill the smell. So, over the years, we've had to cut out and replace floorboards (and occasionally wallboards & molding.) Andrew's gotten quite good at this, unfortunately. We then clean the heck out of the carpet and put in new padding, then feed the cat there for a while and they cease to relieve themselves in that area.

There is one corner of our office that has become the worst of all. There is an outside door there that we never open and it seemed like the boy cats had gotten in a pissing war with strays outside. When it rained, the humidity would just bring out the smell. When we put storage units there so they couldn't have access any more, they started hitting the area around it, too. We can no longer clean it and the smell has become unbearable.

So, Andrew decided that before we have the carpets professionally cleaned (like we do every winter,) he'd do the floorboard thing.

Well.

He pulls up the carpet to find out- ahh, you homeowners saw this coming, didn't you?- that it was much worse than we imagined. The screen door outside had been basically funneling water in for years. ("Hadn't these people ever heard of caulk?") It wasn't the humidity that brought out the smell- it was probably fresh water. The flooring, the subfloor, the sill under the door had to be replaced. We had to buy a new door, and we'll probably want a new storm door too.

Now I wish we'd opened that door more often. We might've noticed before now. The best luck I guess we had in this is that we found no mold or termite damage.

So, what started as a simple weekend home project that should have taken a day or maybe a day and a half has run way over schedule- as home projects often do. We both have to work so we haven't even gotten to cleaning the carpet or running new pads, plus we've found a few more areas that could do with the new floorboard treatment. So much for a one-weekend project.

I love my cats, but when they go to the great litterbox in the sky, there shall be no more cats. At least when my dog had an accident recently, she had the decency to poop on a bathroom floor.