Stink

Today, there is good news and bad stink. Let's start with the good news, y'all. My living room wall is back together...at least roughly. It needs a better spackling job, but there is no longer a hole from the living room into the kitchen. Hurrray!

Now - for the bad stink. Something, or multiple somethings, are dead in the wall/ceiling and rotting. Steve-o notes that a foul-smelling molecule called cadaverine may be responsible for the stink. For you science nerds, cadaverine is a diamine with the formula NH2(CH2)5NH2. For you non-science types, it smells just like what it sounds like - a dead body of an animal. Wikipedia also tells me that it is partially responsible for the smell of semen. Hey - don't say you never learned anything from my blog! Not that I said it would be stuff you wanted to learn.

Anyway, I've heard that the stink will take anywhere from 1 week to 6 weeks to go away. Some people seem to have trouble for months, which I am hoping will not be the case for me. But I'll be painting in the next few days, so if the paint VOCs and my least favorite diamine don't blend together to knock me on my a**, then maybe the paint smell can mask the dead animal smell. (Kinda odd that paint fumes are now the preferred smell in my house.)