Fixing The Fucking Sinkhole Part 1

So, for about a year now, we've had a sinkhole in our kitchen.  Yes, you read that right- a sinkhole.  You see, the former owners of our house had to finish the kitchen before selling it to us, and they were... reluctant at best.  To wit, they were surly and pouty about having to do it.  So they just put down the cheapest stuff they could find.

When VikingPrincess and VikingLad came to live with us after the passing of their mother (VikingPrincess and VikingLad are my stepchildren- they lived with their mother until the age of 13 and 12 when their mother passed away from cancer), the family began generating too many dirty dishes for this mom to keep up, so I started using the craptastic dishwasher.  I hadn't been using the craptastic dishwasher, because it was craptastic.  It didn't get the dishes very clean, and wouldn't shut all the way so we had to shove something heavy in front of it to get it to stay shut while washing the dishes.  VikingDad had to fix some pipes and connections in order to even get it to run at first.

Unbeknownst to us, hellish fiends (rats or mice) started to chew through the pipes in back of the dishwasher, creating a slow leak that seeped down through the flimsy cheap tiles and into the floorboards.  (As an aside, yes, we live in the country in a "fixer upper" farmhouse, so there are sometimes rats and mice that decide to attempt to move into our house.  Usually, the cats get them (we have two beautiful Maine Coon cats named Dresden and McCoy that delight in catching and killing rodents in the house), but every once in a while there will be a particularly fiendish rat or mouse that gives the cats a run for their money and does some damage before finally being caught and eaten.)

We first noticed that the floor in front of the dishwasher was getting kind of... spongy.  But by the time we figured out the problem, the damage was done.  The paper thin cheapo tiles were starting to crack and break.  The floorboards started to rot and collapse.  Our kitchen has a high amount of traffic (see post about ravenous hoard), so it didn't take long before a few well-placed steps caused the floor to collapse down into itself, leaving spongy floorboards around a sizeable dent that would sink down whenever someone stepped on it.  Eventually, it collapsed entirely, become a huge gaping hole in the middle of our kitchen floor.

For months, we precariously dodged the sinkhole, watching in dismay as it grew larger and started spreading.  Children and small animals would wander into the kitchen, never to be seen again.  We had to sacrifice a few virgins to keep it from spreading to the living room.

One day, I marched straight up to VikingDad and, with my best barbarian glower, demanded that he fix the giant sinkhole in the kitchen.  Not even looking up from his computer game (and therefore avoiding my intimidating glower entirely, the bastard), he replied, "we don't have the money."  I stood there, arms crossed, glowering and waiting for him to get off his ass and do something.  I had no knowledge of fixing sinkholes, and it was VikingDad who wanted to buy this godsforsaken "fixer upper" of a house anyway.  (The point of a fixer upper is, in my opinion, to fix it up, not to let it fall down around you while you play computer games.)  Eventually, he noticed that I was not going to go away until he did something, so he found an old plywood board and dumped it over said sinkhole, allowing us to avoid its gaping maw while it slowly took over the floor.

So, for months, we traipsed along the plywood bridge to get our snacks, and every time money was mentioned or argued about, I always interjected, "...and we STILL need to save up to fix that fucking sinkhole!"  The good news is that we did, eventually, save up for enough money to fix it, but the bad news is that a lot of our floor and part of our wall could not be saved!  (It may not look like much, but that hole took up about 1/3 of our kitchen.  We have a small kitchen.)