So...
Several weeks ago I was in desperate need of a nice hot shower. I had been playing with Lydia all day and hadn't been able to make it happen during her naptime. So around four o'clock I decided to bring Lydia in the bathroom with lots of little toys and attempt to shower while she was playing. It actually was fairly successful, although the last half of my shower consisted of me poking my head out of the shower door every 30 seconds or so while Lydia sat by the door and fussed. I felt pretty awesome that I had accomplished such a huge feat - showering while my baby was awake. I dried my hair and we headed downstairs to play. I turned on Pandora and we were dancing around to some song on "Toddler Radio" when I felt a drop on my arm. At first I thought that Lydia had spit up or something to that effect, but upon further inspection... I found this:
The fairly large water spot on my rug led to the discovery of this:
I immediately felt my stomach drop. A water leak in my brand new ceiling?!?! Really?
I grabbed a bowl to place under the leak and immediately called the warranty service center for McArthur homes. Ironically, I had just contacted them the previous day because we realized that we were missing an extra plug in our kitchen island that we had requested and paid for. They had just replied a few hours earlier with a very nice and professional response that they would be by on the following Monday to add that plug. (I'm pretty sure that my house heard me complaining about the plug and was like "Hey buddy, if you want to complain... I'll give you something to complain about.") Unfortunately it was JUST after five o'clock and they were gone for the day. I left a frantic message, and then called David.
Poor David. Earlier in the day he told me that he was going to have to work until 7 or 8, but when I called him he decided that he needed to come home to help. He had to work extra hard the next few days to make up for that lost time. But, it was a pretty serious concern! We'd only been in our house for less than a month and a half and already we were having water leaking through the ceiling.
I dug around in all of our piles of paperwork that we received from McArthur and found an emergency warranty number. No answer, but I left a message. Then I found something that said if it was a true emergency that we could call the plumbing company directly. At this point, the water had finally slowed to a stop. We were still concerned and so we called the plumbing company to see what they recommended. (Besides, what is a true emergency anyway?) They said we were probably okay now, and that they would send someone out in the morning. We were okay with that, and just avoided using any water in our bathroom for the rest of the night. (Thank goodness for two other bathrooms in this beautiful house.) The next morning I got a call from Glen @ McArthur, who said that he wanted to come and take a look before the plumbers stopped by. Apparently, they had a few other leaks in the last couple of months because of a faulty shower insert (or something like that) and he wanted to make sure that wasn't it before sending the plumbing guys over. He stopped by soon after and informed us that our shower insert was perfectly fine and that he would send the plumbers over asap.
This whole time, I was thinking that it must be an actual plumbing pipe, because the water leaking was actually about 8-10 feet away from the wall... a good distance away from where the shower was. But I thought it must be connected to the shower because it had started leaking after my shower. Glen gave us the go-ahead to use the toilet/sink - but asked us to avoid the shower until the plumbers could come look at it.
The plumber arrived the following afternoon. (Coincidentally, this was the same day that a refrigerator repairman came to fix the unbalanced freezer door/broken fridge door AND our landscaping crew built our retaining wall with large boulders and an awesome backhoe in our backyard.) He went upstairs and turned on the water in the shower for five minutes while we came down and waited to see if anything would happen. Nothing. He turned off the shower and made a small hole in the ceiling underneath the shower. Immediately, water started pouring from the hole. Pouring.
The water kept up a steady stream for an hour and twenty minutes. The plumber man was shocked. He kept repeating "I can't believe how much water is in there." Several times he remarked that he was amazed that our whole ceiling hadn't collapsed on us. Apparently there was a month and a half's worth of water that had been hanging out in our ceiling for weeks and weeks. The insulation that we placed in the ceiling acted like a giant sponge and held the water until it was too saturated to hold anymore, and then the water found a seam and started leaking out.
Here he is just staring at the water. He was afraid to cut out the whole piece until the water stopped, but he cut several holes to help draining and he even brought in his wet-vac to suck the water out. I couldn't help but laugh at the whole situation. The plumber left a few times and every time he came back and said "It's still draining?", I couldn't help but laugh. It seems it was the only thing to do. What a mess.
Finally- after several hours of draining, cutting, and removing the sheetrock and insulation - the plumber was able to get to the root of the problem. The drainpipe connected to the shower was cracked. If you look at this picture closely (click to zoom in) you can see a little piece of light from the upstairs. It was a hole about the size of a pea and was leaking water like crazy. I wish that I would have taken a picture of it after he got his tools and pulled it out. The crack went around more than 1/2 of the pipe, with a big chunk missing where the hole was. If you pulled the pieces apart it would leave a giant gaping mouth looking thing in the drain pipe.
Luckily, after he found the problem - it was fairly easy to fix. He did his thing, cleaned up, and cleared out. Then he came back the next day to verify that the seal was holding and give us the okay to use the shower again. I was relieved that it had been so easy, and grateful that McArthur was covering the whole thing under our warranty. I would have been much more upset if we were paying for it.
We basically lived with that gaping hole in the ceiling for the next two weeks. I was surprised when I couldn't find any pictures of it - but we really avoided spending much time in that room because it was pretty chaotic. The couches were both moved, the chaise was tucked into the corner by the tv and there were piles of sheets hanging around waiting for the next time they would need to be used. This was the best picture that shows a glimpse of the disarray.
Luckily, Lydia is a happy baby and didn't seem to mind the fact that half the family room furniture was temporarily placed on the landing of the stairs leading to the basement, or that the room was arranged funny. It just gave her more room to crawl around.
Finally, after everything was all dried out (we hope) - the sheetrocker came and made an even bigger hole. He cut out the space under the shower all the way down to where the leak made itself manifest. Then he placed new sheetrock to make our ceiling whole again. One thing that we thought was really cool: After he had cut the hole, he remarked that he hadn't been told that he needed to put insulation in the ceiling so he hadn't brought any. I told him that we had put the insulation in ourselves, but we didn't expect him to replace it. We had considered going and buying more so we could fill the area, but we decided it wasn't worth buying a whole package just for that little section. He seemed okay with that, but said that he was going to check and see if they had any extra. He came back a while later with several large pieces of insulation and stuck them up in the ceiling before he sheetrocked over the hole. I was so impressed and grateful! I must say - we weren't thrilled when we found a water leak in our brand new house, but McArthur has definitely taken care of us. Things like this happen - but it is the way that the workers treated us that have made the process so nice. They have all gone out of their way to be nice and accommodating. We are grateful for the insulation, even though we didn't expect it.
After the sheetrock was put in, he taped and mudded it. Then, it was time for the texture to go up. I so wish I would have stayed downstairs to see how he did this. I will forever wonder that the process was. I was impressed that he made an effort to line up each piece of the texture with the surrounding areas.
The texture was placed on a Thursday. The following Monday (almost three weeks after the initial leak) the painter came by and gave us a few good coats of our pretty "Grecian Ivory".
Now I'm happy to announce that we are finally back in business. We moved our rug, tables, and lamps up from the stairway and put everything back into it's correct positions. With the blinds, I'd say it looks almost as good as new. If you look closely you can see the place where the hole was because the texture is slightly smaller in scale than the surrounding areas. I'm a little bummed about that, because I was hoping that you would be able to see anything. Oh well. I guess you can't live in a perfect home for long, something is always going to get damaged. And that's okay. It more important to me that my house feel cozy and lived in than perfect in every way.
And that, my friends is the story of how we sprang a leak. It has been a crazy month: we worked with five different people for the leak in our ceiling, we had people over working on our rock wall and sprinkler system, an electrician came and put in that extra plug, a refrigerator repairman from RC Willey came and fixed our fridge doors, worked with a fence guy to get a bid for a fence, and we frantically had to go to Lowes one night before an impending rainstorm for a new black-rain-water-tube because the last rainstorm had come down our raingutters and had pooled around our neighbors foundation. And that is just the home repair stuff that we dealt with. But, even with all of that - we love our house and love being homeowners.
Just cross your fingers that this is the last of our homeowner woes for the time being. Now that we've got that mess cleaned up - we are finally ready to start hanging things on our wall. Two months in... I'd say it's about time. Yay for normal living again!
