Picture of the Day: August 24

I was supposed to go hiking today but my friend had to bail on me and I didn't feel like going alone. I decided to instead just stay home and relax. In fact, it's 5pm and I'm still in my pajamas. Hmm. Maybe I took that relax thing a little far. Oops. :)

Anyway, I figured I'd take a little time and double check the house for earthquake damage...like this. All of my lego men fell over!

Seriously, though, it turns out we did actually sustain some damage, and it's not exactly a quick fix. The water in the upstairs bathroom has turned rusty, which means a possible cracked water pipe. The earliest we can get anyone out to look at it is Monday, so for now I've shut the water off to the toilet and sink and moved all of my stuff to the guest bathroom downstairs, which I'll be using until we figure out what's going on. Thank goodness we have more than one full bathroom!

The other damage is going to be a bit more intensive to address...it turns out our 17'x20' concrete shed (built in 1930) didn't fare so well. It had a few cracks before, but nothing that couldn't be patched up. Now, though...

This crack was here before, but was nowhere near this bad.

If you look at the crack from the side you can tell how the building actually shifted on the blocks. Eek. Those blocks are now protruding about an inch and a half out from the rest of the wall.

The back of that same wall has a new ground-to-roof crack...

...as well as a crack that runs from the ground to the window...

...and the back wall of the shed is now cracked from the ground to the roof, too.

Some of the worst damage is on the front of the shed by the doors. That crack was not there before! It's a bit over an inch wide at the widest point near the top.

The worst part, though, is that the crack managed to separate that entire section of wall from the ground and the roof and the rest of the shed, which means that section of wall is being held up by its good looks alone (or perhaps gravity and sheer luck). It's a bit breezy today, and when I was outside taking these pictures, you could see that section of wall gently swaying back and forth every time it got hit by a gust of wind. Yikes!

After texting Mark to tell him to call me about our new earthquake problem, my next text was to my buddy John (the one who came to visit last week). I figured if anyone would know what to do next, it would be him, and I was right! He's hopefully going to head down here in a week or two to help us secure the building so we can get our stuff out of it, then we're going to come up with a game plan to demolish the shed. We're planning to save the metal roof and some of the historical details (the horseshoe above the doors and some of the electrical insulators on the walls), then we'll be building a new, sturdier shed in its place. Since we'll need to rent a dumpster to demolish the shed we may also tear out the ugly concrete pad in the backyard while we're at it. While these were all things we wanted to do someday, they weren't on the short list until today! Oh well. At least this appears to be the worst of the damage...let's hope it stays that way!