Thursday, August 23, 2007

The Good News, The Bad News & The Ugly News

It is not news here at Casa de NoMommy that I fell in love with Ralph’s house before I fell in love with him. To be honest, I fell in love with his living room, and the rest I figured I could mold into what I really wanted. Hmmm, sort of like Ralph…

Anyway, soon enough I was in love with Ralph too. I moved in, and the molding began.

We started in our 1970’s family room addition. It had ugly fake wood paneling that had to go. We ripped it off of the walls and found mold underneath. Great! We ripped out all of the walls, the ceiling and the floor. We replaced all of the studs in one wall ripped out another in order to put in a French door and then put it all back together again. Then we set about remodeling our 1940’s kitchen. We ripped out all of the cabinets and designed and installed all new ones. We put in a new sink, dishwasher, and a new countertop. We have waterproofed, put in new windows and doors, we’ve painted in and out, carpeted, had our tub refinished. To make a long story short(er), there is always something to do in a 65 year old house. And, as I’ve mentioned, I have had enough of it.

That is why I was so furious a few months ago when I went into my basement to do laundry only to find water all over the floor. We knew basically where it was coming from, but not exactly. It happened sometimes, but not every time we used one of the water producing mechanisms in the Casa. Around the same time we started smelling a nasty sewer gas odor coming from our linen closet. We knew that it happened when we ran the upstairs bathroom sink, but we couldn’t figure out why or how. I called a plumber.

The plumber came out and looked at both bathrooms, he went down to the basement, he looked at the linen closet… nothing. It was like when your car acts up just until you pull into the mechanic’s shop. No leaking water, no smell. The guy acted like I was out of my fucking mind. If something was going on it would be going on all of the time. If I wanted him to really figure out what was going on, he’d have to start opening up walls. Uh, no thanks, I’ll just wait for…something else to happen. Then it did.

Last week I had to shave my legs in the bathroom sink, I just didn’t have time to get back into the shower. When I was done I realized that the shirt I wanted to wear was in the basement. Fuck! There was water on the floor and it was dripping from the ceiling. On the bright side, I knew what had caused it, and I knew where it was coming from.

So, the other day when The Bug was spending the night with his grandparents, Ralph and I opened up the spot in our ½ bath ceiling that we thought would give us access to the problem above it. If it didn’t, we’d have to rip out more walls, which was a cluster fuck that I totally didn’t want to have to deal with.

We open up the spot and, lo and behold, the fucking PVC pipe isn’t even connected, there is daylight between one end and the other. So, every time we have run the sink in our full bath, the water has been going….who the fuck knows where.

The good news: we were able to fix the problem with minimal cost and construction
The bad news: this is what my bathroom ceiling is going to look like until I can get somebody in here to fix it.

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

Ugh. That's awful. At least you've found the source.

We had a leaky basement when we lived in TN. Never did find the source.

OhTheJoys said...

Good luck with repair H*LL. Ugh. I feel your pain.