Can You Smell That Smell

The other night I was standing in front of the kitchen sink, sniffing around as usual. Was it coming from under? From the space between the window and the wall? David was called in for a second opinion, discussing what it smelled like. Not exactly rotten, sort of wet and moldering.....we looked at the pipes, where the pipes exit the house, under,over, around. Then finally - the old garbage disposal - we'd gotten the schumtz out from the top but there's likely more stuck further down where we can't reach it. Given how much has to be done we can't  deal with it now....so I took the low road and stuffed a rag in it after dumping some straight Pine Sol, fixed for now.  We still have some Pee Oasises - the particle board they used to repair around the toilet is troublesome. It's much better but like I've said before it's not constant, it's good, it's good, it's whiffy. But a couple more applications of either one of my favorites - PB Gone or OdorBan  - and it should be gone. Part of the problem is as we continue to dismantle things you're never sure where it's coming from - is it really the house or is from under the house?

David got up to the garage attic - when I peeked up there last week we were pleasantly surprised to find there was some stuff, but not much. Mostly boxes and we were surprised to find it was from the people who lived here prior to the hoarder. There were boxes upon boxes of old receipts, pay stubs, they'd run a quail farm (not here). Layers and layers, they'd had this nationally known farm that raised quail,grouse and rabbit, there was a fire, it was all destroyed. They rebuilt, got sued, he died, 3rd(?) wife kept the farm and screwed up it horribly, fraud, animal abuse, she ran from the law - neighbor told David this guy had a finger in every pie, his son just borrowed against what was left and walked. David burned most of it, it was just old paperwork. There were a lot of old paperbacks but the mice had made homes out of most of them. I did manage to save a copy of Portnoy's Complaint -

the 70's version of 50 Shades Of Grey

I have not been back in the crawlspaces upstairs, we do need to buy some rat poison just in case. I don't think there's any activity as you hear it but just to be safe. Eventually I'd like to remove the old insulation since I'm sure it's the source of Stinkiness and then make it usable storage. We can use the attic over the garage but all the boxes have to be closed because....Surprise, surprise.....it smells of cat pee.  But I'm not planning on bunking up there so for now it's ok, David rinsed it down and swept it so we can move some stuff up there. We don't have garage doors yet and I think we're both tired of looking at the stacks of boxes and so forth we can't put away yet. The cabinets in the kitchen are usable but have no doors so today I took it all out and rearranged it so we can finally find things. We're getting there.