Well, THIS should be interesting!

A while ago, I noticed that it looked like we had water damage in the corner of our kitchen. It appeared as a brownish discoloration on the baseboards. The wall looked fine, nothing was damp to the touch, so I just attributed it to a fluke from the recent torrential downpours we'd been having and the fact that the concrete thingy that goes under the downspout to route water away from the house had been moved out from under the downspout.  I dumped some fill dirt in the massive erosion hole that had been created, placed the cement thingy under the downspout and watched the corner for any further signs of leakage or damage. Nothing showed up.

Woohoo!!

In one of the dozens of furniture shuffling episodes, a bookcase got moved in front of the damage and I pretty much forgot about it.

Until a couple weeks ago when I was cleaning the kitchen floor and I noticed that corner looked a bit dark. What the heck? I moved the bookcase out and discovered that my little fix-it out back apparently failed. The water damage was worse and now there was mold.

Fabulous.

I scrubbed it down and kept my eye on it. On Tuesday, we finally called housing maintenance. I really thought that the fix would involve replacing at least baseboards and possibly pulling the siding off the outside, which is why I'd put it off.

The housing guy showed up and said they'd clean it, treat it with disinfectant, prime it, and repaint it.

Ummm.....okay?

So I had to ask - what about fixing the problem that caused the damage in the first place?

The answer? We could try getting a hose to fit on the downspout to route the water away from the foundation.

Ummm....okay.

So today housing maintenance showed up to 'fix' the corner.  And by 'fix' I mean slapped some Kilz on it.

I asked him what I should do when the water damage shows up again. I was thinking that maybe it was a three strikes thing - three non-successful fixes to the exact same problem and then they actually fix it.  I mean, it is military housing, privatized or not. He misunderstood what I meant and told me he was putting a pretty heavy coat of primer on it, so it shouldn't bleed through. I guess he forgot that the problem hasn't actually been fixed. Or something. Whatever.

Military life is always interesting. Always.