End of September was the time when we felt we wanted to turn the heating system of the house on. The installation uses water for heating, and the radiators went short of water as we could hear them making noises. Since we were not sure how to turn the water supply for the radiators, we contacted ex-owners of the house, and they eagerly helped us explaining how it worked. So sweet! The procedure sounded very uncomplicated. You just had to turn a valve to the right, he said pointing on the valve, and that’s it. So, ex-owner left us to spend his weekend on something more exciting than us.
And we did it. Turned the valve to the right. Everything was kind of cool, until I could hear like someone was showering on the second floor. We don’t have a shower on second floor. So I thought, that that someone was showering on the first floor. Pause. But Mr. J. was outside in the garden, and Miss A. and me were playing together.
I rushed out to second floor following the sound. That sounded like when you shower. And then it looked liked water everywhere. Splashing.
And it was panic. And I swore. In English. Although it is against our house rules. And I was angry. Angry on Mr. J. and me and stupid radiator.
The water splashed out of the radiator and drained down to the first floor. Where we have our bathroom.
Water leaked because we didn’t properly shut the air canal on radiator.
So, it was weekend, we were there in the house, the room in the second floor was totally wet, and the ceiling, floor and walls in the bathroom on first floor were wet.
Friend of ours came and helped us out. That was fantastic. Lucky us to have him. Thank you J.. We removed the wet carpet. The carpet was fortunately waterproof, so the cover floor didn’t get damaged. Thanks Lord! All the wet plates covering the bathroom ceiling were also removed. To prevent the rot we had to introduce some air and ventilation through a hole in between the bathroom and the second floor. So, we removed this cover floor that was under the wet carpet and then there was this old, crooked and red painted hard wood floor.
I was fascinated as we removed the damaged ceiling in bathroom. There were several different layers of bathroom ceilings from different time periods that were hidden above the actual ceiling. I thought it was weird, that while renovating and establishing a new ceiling nobody really bothered to remove the old one. So, as time went on, the bathroom accumulated four layers of ceiling. The men thought there was no big deal. Anyway, it felt like I was participating in an archaeological excavation.
So, the red painted hard wood floor. My first reaction was like ‘What?’ I was a bit offended since I thought why you would ever paint your wood floor red? Then I thought that it had probably been trendy at some point during the last 100 years. And it felt better. Then I remembered I had actually experienced a couple of that kind of colored floors. Of course. At my grandmas house in Armenia. I remember it was so worn out that you could hardly see it was red. And some other houses back in my hometown. All of them old houses. And in Georgia, when Mr. J. and me visited Kazbegi region and stayed at a local B&B. Well, seemed that red floors weren’t just a Soviet time phenomena. I decided not to be so emotional about newly discovered floor but rather tried to think that whatever we were dealing with was historic. Not the red paint but the hard wood floor I am pretty sure is original, back from 1870’s.
The House Near the Forest 