Lemme tell you, our bathroom’s wallpaper wasn’t its only problem-to-be-remedied recently. So brace yourself while we weave a little plumbing tale that spanned over the last few weeks (in fact it just wrapped up a few days ago). You know how we solemnly swear to share the good, the bad, and the ugly? Well, this one can be filed under “the bad” and “the ugly” with a side of “the gross.” So for everyone’s sake, we’ll leave out the graphic pictures.
During the process of buying this house we noticed a very small, dried out water stain on the ceiling in the living room, right below where the bathroom was. We and the inspector concluded it was likely from a toilet overflow from long ago, since the stain was only about 3″ wide and long dried up. So we weren’t too alarmed and just figured it was solved decades ago, so a little primer and ceiling paint were all that it needed. We never even photographed it, but here’s a hint as to where it was.
Then this fall, the toilet started to act up. Namely in that it would occasionally clog (this is your first hint to put down your breakfast) and when we attempted to plunge it, well, it would back-up into the shower. If that first hint didn’t work, something tells me you’re putting your breakfast down right about now.
Yeah, it was gross. And since a certain half of this relationship was already queasy from growing a tiny human, I was the only one on duty (a little pun to lighten the mood). Usually a bit more plunging and maybe a bit of snaking would fix the issue. I say “usually” because this happened more than once. And before you start judging our gastrointestinal prowess, I should note that this sort of back-up sometimes happened when the toilet wasn’t even involved – maybe after a shower or after I shaved in the sink. We googled for answers and contemplated calling in a pro, but the “incidents” were few and far enough between that we figured we could hold out ’til we remodeled the room.
But last month came the back-up that plunging could not conquer.
***PHOTO OMITTED TO PROTECT YOUR DELICATE RETINAS***
And in all of my furious plunging, I managed to create a new water stain in the ceiling below. I’d later learn that all the pressure of such vigorous plunging had compromised the wax ring and water started leaking again. That was our cue to call in a pro. He removed the toilet, ran an 150 foot snake and dislodged what he concluded was “years worth of paper build-up” way down in our pipes somewhere. Phew! Problem solved.
Except it wasn’t. Fast forward another week and the shower starts to back-up again. In fact, it happens as I’m using the tub to fill up the steamer during may latest wallpaper removal spree. So not only was that process miserable on its own, I was doing it with a less than fresh-looking (and smelling) shower nearby. Not to mention that we’re both beyond frustrated that our first call to the plumber didn’t solve the problem. So yeah, clearly the picture below was taken before the back-up happened. Just look at me all footloose and fancy free.
Remember when I called this post-wallpapered look: “gas station bathroom.” I was really thinking it was more reminiscent of that scene in Trainspotting. Yeah, you know the one. And if you don’t, well, I highly suggest that you NOT google it right now. Okay, maybe our bathroom wasn’t that bad. But it was bad enough that I was embarrassed that this was the state the plumbers would see it in.
Then again, things didn’t get much prettier once they arrived. Now that I think about it, I guess they’ve pretty much seen it all.
The plumbing company sent a different guy this time and, after explaining the series of events, he had a pretty solid theory. But it meant cutting into our ceiling to confirm it. Welcome to our crash course in two-story home issues. Kinda made us miss the days where virtually everything was visible from a crawl space or attic.
His hunch was correct. All of the bathroom plumbing was configured wrong. And it had been for 30+ years since they built this house. A key element – the slope of the main drain pipe – was incorrect. So rather than having gravity to help water leave the vicinity, it was actually sloped uphill – so water and sewage that should have been flushed down and out of the house would collect and pool and eventually back-up into the lowest opening in that bathroom (i.e. the shower). In the words of Clara: yuckaroo.
The only solution was to cut a bigger hole in the ceiling and have the experts replace all the plumbing. It even meant cutting out one of the load-bearing joists and reinforcing it with a new one so the new pipes could be configured at the right angle, so it was nothing that we dared to attempt ourselves.
Did we like having our house torn apart? No. But we were pretty relieved that the root of the problem was finally getting fixed. And I’ll admit that we were pretty entertained by the view through the floor.
It only took them a day to complete the task (they came back a few days after their initial diagnosis to get it done) along with a somewhat painful $650 check, but we were relieved that this hidden-behind-the-walls issue that had plagued this house for over three decades was finally solved. Which meant we could finally get back to our little bathroom update. And hey, while the toilet was removed, we were able to strip that small swatch of wallpaper that had been hiding behind the bowl, so that was kind of funny (very marginally at the time, but more so now).
But we were still left with that gaping hole in the living room ceiling well after the bathroom was trimmed out and painted.
We went back and forth about drywalling it ourselves – which basically involves mudding, taping, sanding, re-mudding, and re-sanding. Smooth ceilings are especially tricky (imperfections are a lot more visible up there) and we knew any remaining dents or seams would have bugged us forever, so we finally just pulled the trigger and called a highly recommended local drywall guy.
He fixed it flawlessly in a few hours for around $100, and was also very nice (he said Sherry looked like Topanga from Boy Meets World, which pretty much made our day). So now all we’ve got to do is prime and paint it.
Update: A few folks have asked if our home warranty would have covered this issue (that actually ran out before this fiasco) but it most likely would not, since this was an “existing condition” (the plumbing didn’t break after we moved in, it was configured this way for 30 years, so that’s not something typically covered by a home warranty).
These unplanned homeowner curveballs never feel good (especially when we’d rather be spending that money on fun updates that we can actually see and enjoy) but it’s nice to have things all put back together again. The irony is that we have another “oh the joys of home ownership” story unfolding (it’s still halfway-solved, so we’ll wait for the full resolution before crying on your shoulder). Please tell us we’re not the only ones. Regale us with some of your tales of woe in the plumbing/heating/other house systems arenas. We’re all in this together. Right?
Psst- The “Volume Two” part of this post’s title is thanks to this original leak lesson that we dealt with a few years ago at our last house. Best thing about that one is that it was something we could solve ourselves (read: zero benjamins).
kerry says
You’re not the only ones. For the longest time I just wanted a house, then when I got one I realized that owning a home is essentially a never ending list of things to do, that you don’t have the money to do right now but whenever you get money, there’s the list waiting for you! Your bathroom is PIMP! Somehow I haven’t seen the full reveal. LOVE IT!
YoungHouseLove says
Aw, thanks Kerry!
xo
s
Denise says
Lucky the liquid grossness didn’t spill down onto the family room – euwwww. Plumbing problems are the worst!
Our story began when the city re-lined the sewer down the middle of the street and Forgot To Cut The Hole To The Discharge Pipe To Our House. That’s right. Squeal! OMGOMG!
It wasn’t too noticeable because my hubs was living there single at the time, at work all day, so not a strain on the drain, which was an old terra cotta thing, that had been infiltrated by tree roots. So essentially, the grossness sort of seeped out of the pipe far under ground. That tree was living the high life with plenty of fertilizer!
Then we married, and I moved in, and we noticed back-ups in the basement more often. We had the whole basement & front yard torn up and new pipes run all the way to the street. Small house, small yard, but still a mess.
But the guy who took off the toilet to snake the problem near the beginning of our diagnostics (referred to as He Who Will Never Be Hired Again), neglected to use a new ring when he replaced the toilet. Unbeknowngst to us, that slowly seeped under the tile of the bathroom, which we noticed more than a year later. We had that re-set but still have to repair the rotted subfloor & re-tile. Sigh.
Learned a lot more about plumbing during that than I ever wanted to know! Best: the cameras the plumbers can run thru the pipes are really, really sharp!
Susan says
Have owned several older houses; now live in a new one. Your post sent us down “memory lane”. Our biggest issues came in the NEW house… stress induced amnesia blocks recounting of that. Rather, here’s our ‘favorite’ old house adventure. The home inspector & we paid no mind to a cheap Styrofoam ice cooler sitting on top of a shelf in basement. A few months later, after monsoon rain, I heard drip-drip. Investigation revealed cooler was brimming with water. The front porch was sloping toward the house. Pooling rain water had rotted wood and created a basement water feature. Yep, previous owner’s solution was the cooler for water containment. When jackhammering away front porch, discovered it had been poured twice. More jack-hammering. Porch repoured, wood replaced. Styrofoam cooler burned in effigy.
Lizzie T. says
I feel for you. When we got our old house ready to sell, I had a handyman come by to replace a cracked tile in the kitchen. It was right where I usually stood to do any food prep and had been cracked for a while, but I figured that was NBD. When he removed it, he found that at some point before we bought the house, someone had attempted to fill a huge rotting section of the subfloor with thinset. That did not work too well, and after clearing out all the rot he found that the joist was rotted, too. Fortunately the floors were inexplicably double-joisted (a weird feature on a tiny cheapish 1950 house, but we were grateful), so he was able to saw out and replace the rotted joist and subfloor section, but it meant that what we originally anticipated would be a $40, 30-minute cosmetic repair turned into a multi-hour, $900, structural repair. Good times. I was actually grateful that it didn’t cost even more than that.
Cheryl says
I am the owner of a hundred year old rowhouse. I feel your pain. We had to tear out the newly refinished kitchen ceiling and wall in order to remove and replace the 4″ (I think)iron “poop pipe” that had rotted away inside the wall. How’d we know that we had a problem? Water (and who knows what else) started running through the wall and puddling in the basement. Yep. Fortunately, fiance is a handyman and between his skills and my wallet, we fixed everything. It wasn’t pretty.
Shellie L. says
When we moved into our house (which just has 1 bathroom!), we liked the “retro” look of the bathroom that seemed to be in really good shape…cool green tiles on the floors in a neat pattern, etc. But, when I was 4 months pregnant with our daughter and was trying to relax by taking a bath, a shower tile popped off and a MUSHROOM was underneath. I totally freaked out and needless to say, we did a complete renovation before our baby arrived. We had a lot of trouble with the wax ring too…we can look back on it and laugh now but I think we went through 5 or 6 wax rings trying to get the new toilet put in!
YoungHouseLove says
No. Way.
You guys, these stories are both terrifying, endearing, and amazing. Thanks for sharing in the misery (you know it loves company).
xo
s
Laura says
Hey! Last month my niece who lives with us was showering in our basement bathroom one night when suddenly she came upstairs and declared that she couldn’t turn off the shower. No matter how much we turned the faucet the darn thing wouldn’t turn off!! Of course this happened at 11pm and we couldn’t get a plumber out there to fix it. We wound up turning the water off to the house and having to wait 2 days for someone to come and fix the valves in the wall which were 60 years old and rusted to pieces. Ah the joys of home ownership!
Katie D. says
So, I’m wondering if this was what the drywall guy was envisioning: http://ow.ly/t9awd
(Sherpanga?)
YoungHouseLove says
Bahahahahah! That just legitimately made me scream. Truly terrifying.
xo
s
Sara Smith says
Within a week of buying our first home, we had a major plumbing issue. We had standing water in the basement after we took a shower. Called a plumber, ran a snake through the sewer line, thought he fixed it. But he didn’t. It happened again, so they sent someone else out with a longer snake and a camera. We ended up having to replace our whole main sewer line…which was about 5k. That was just the beginning of our homeowner woes…So yeah, I feel your pain.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man, that hurts!
xo
s
Barbara Moore says
Paying for a plumber is right up there with new tires for your car in the ‘hate to spend $, but must have’ category! Glad it’s fixed, though – plumbing problems can be the gift that keeps giving if not corrected properly. The new bath is lovely!
Melinda@ Love Melinda says
I was eating my breakfast while reading this. And yes I did put it down.
I don’t like writing those kinds of checks but there is a sense of relief that the problem is solved and no more unknowns!
Sarah K says
Hi – completely unrelated to this post, but I just came across this:
http://www.cb2.com/all-sale/sale/lucky-7/s267112
That you should know about….although maybe you already do. And it’s on sale! Happy house primping!
YoungHouseLove says
LOVE IT!
xo
s
Amanda says
Sounds like a few episodes of “Ask This Old House”. At least you eventually got it figured out before it became a disaster. I have family who have chosen (for some unknown reason) to live with plumbing issues rather than call in a pro and get it fixed. Not fun to write the check, but in the long run you are going to be way happier getting it done right.
Heidi E says
Oh what a fiasco! Thanks for including the prices.. I would’ve assumed that the price would’ve been over a thousand for sure.. it’s nice to get a perspective on what pros cost.
And.. you are NOT alone. The day after we bought our first house our basement was filled with gray water backup.. it was roots in the pipes. Around here that’s normal I guess, but that doesn’t sound great to a brand new homeowner.
Sassafras says
Two home back (apprx. 12 years ago now) we no sooner moved in than the EPA showed up w/a complaint that water was draining apparently from our house into a stream. Boo hiss. $10,000 a day fine if not fixed w/i so many days. During his inspection we figured out that the old septic tank was leaking and a new one was required along w/the crushing and filling in of the old one, new pipes placed, etc. Well joy of joys. NOT.
After tapping ourselves nearly out to buy the place we were hit with this. It cost us apprx. $3500 all told to get ‘er up to speed. These kind of issues are NO FUN. Once fixed though you can rest your pretty heads hopefully for a while. In any case, we figured out we needed to be saving $$s for these ‘unexpected’ joys of home ownership. As a result our financial life got better in the long run, but it was painful at the moment.
Yuckaroo is right!!! Glad you got it fixed before things got worse.
Kelsey says
We recently had a similar issue with our new house as well! Both the toilet and the sink in our bathroom were backing up into the shower/tub. It was disgusting! We called in a plumber to snake the drain and while he was snaking it broke the pipe and disgusting black water came flooding down the ceiling in our foyer. UGH! The worst part was they didn’t event clear the clog yet! After the pipe that plumber #1 broke, the company quoted us almost $3k to fix the issue, which they still didn’t seem 100% on what it was or where the clog was. We called in another company for a second opinion and thank god we did! They had more experience with an older home built in the 40’s, knew exactly where the clog probably was and fixed it for less thank $1k. Even though they had to rip out dry wall in three locations and replace a line of pipes, it was worth it to have it all fixed!
Annie says
you are SOOOOO Topanga wow, the similarities…
Aaron@QuinnImagery says
Sorry for your bathroom woes! Let me tell you, I have been there! I bought a cottage built in 1930 that had a basement bathroom. All looked good when we bought the house. One day my wife was working on a cabinet project in the bathroom, swung a hammer and missed, hitting the toilet. Cracked that sucker. At first it was upsetting, but it turns out it’s a good thing she broke the toilet and it had to be taken out, otherwise we wouldn’t have known that the original wax ring was the WRONG size and hence every flush of the toilet was filling up then slowly soaking into the ground under the house. The entire bathroom floor, joists and all, and half way up nearby studs within the wall were all rotted. The bathroom had to be gutted. Good times.
Marianna says
That pretty much happened to us Saturday morning, too (although without the super-ick factor luckily). We just finished having our master bathroom remodeled. Apparently no regular running water through the drains dried up whatever was sitting in the pipes. Once water was restored they were set loose in the form of clogs, backing up our toilet and tub. Tub made it through one shower, but with a gurgling, bubbling toilet. I wasn’t so lucky during shower number two.
Expensive plumber bill to resolve the immediate issue with an additional recommend to avoid future issues – replace long, old internally-corroded metal pipe which is held onto the PVC pipe next to it by duct tape and something else inadequate. Good news is that the pipe is (mostly) exposed in our semi-finished basement, but it will still involve cutting away drywall – no idea what all that’ll cost yet. The former homeowner apparently cut some corners when doing the plumbing in that area, alas!
Welcome to home ownership, I guess :)
Mia B says
The joys of new homeownership! I think every house we’ve ever bought has had something go freakishly wrong within the first year. Our very first house had a huge corner lot with the major selling point of several mature, gorgeous elm trees. On our first night sleeping there a terrible storm took about 40% of the tree limbs down and introduced us to our lifelong partnership with the chainsaw. A few months later, I was rinsing a blue paintbrush out in the kitchen sink and noticed that the backyard had a patch of blue grass outside the window (sewer line from kitchen and laundry had not been hooked into the new sewer line the seller had installed the previous year, so all kitchen and laundry water was watering the grass). The week before our wedding I came home to find the street completely flooded and water pouring over our curb and a huge suspicious hump in the grass (water main break). Nothing like a huge, non-negotiable expense like getting water service the week before a major life milestone!
When we moved to this 1975 two-story house two years ago, high on our wish list were some cosmetic updates so we were saving our pennies for that. During our home inspection, I smelled a whiff of natural gas near the kitchen, but DH, realtor and inspector poo-poo’d me and said they didn’t smell anything. After closing but before moving in, we were sitting in folding chairs in the kitchen with the alarm company guy and I smelled it again. Again, I was the crazy lady dreaming things. Fast forward 7 months, when I came home after midnight after a deadline at work and swore I smelled gas again, but I was really tired so didn’t investigate. The next morning the smell was undeniable and developed into a full-blown gas emergency, complete with the gas company telling my husband when he called to report it: “Don’t call your wife back, the phone ringing could trigger a spark that might blow your house up!” (Spoiler alert: I lived and our house didn’t blow up, but that may be because DH texted me to get out of the house immediately instead of calling.)
Gas shut off by gas co. employee, who mentioned he saw in the files on our address that someone had been out to the house the previous year for the last homeowner to shut off the gas due to a leak, and his gas “sniffer” was finding it in the same place under the kitchen window (BAD SELLER! BAD EVIL SELLER WHO COULD HAVE BLOWN ME UP BY HIDING THE PROBLEMS WITH A FREAKING MAJOR ISSUE!)
Our home warranty did cover pre-existing conditions, and sent a plumber out (that is the trade that deals with gas pipes in my state), but hours later they were only able to isolate that the leak was somewhere outside the window at which point home warranty said if it’s outside your four walls, it’s not warrantied. Home warranty did pay the $300 for the “leak detection/isolation” service, though. Wheee!
It took two weeks, $5,000 for plumbers, 14 holes in the drywall and through the concrete floors in five rooms, holes in the concrete driveway, holes in the yard, holes in the flowerbed, another $600 for drywall repairs, relocation of our gas meter outside and a new gas line under the driveway, abandoning all of our original gas lines inside and out, relocation of all our gas lines to the attic, an additional visit when it was found out the upstairs furnace was on a completely different gas line which wasn’t discovered until the first cold night of the year, giving up the gas fireplace and gas to the kitchen or laundry room due to the fact that a money tree didn’t come with the property and we found heat more important that someday getting that gas range in the kitchen I’d wanted. Also, it took two years for us to finally paint all the rooms that had drywall patches and to fix the last hole in the floor of an unused bedroom.
Sometimes it’s nice to be proved right but this time it was a very painful experience!
Maria says
Hi John & Sherry! I have been reading your blog since house number 1. I’m a huge fan :). This plumbing issue you two had to deal with reminded me of what my husband and I had to deal with, although ours ended up leading all the way to our septic! Which could have been very costly! Luckily, we found Aero-Stream, http://www.aero-stream.com. We ended up not having to replace our septic (which kept our money in our wallets) and we are actually being kinder to our environment. I thought I’d share since you guys enjoy hearing about new, “green”, and affordable products!
YoungHouseLove says
Such a great tip!
xo
s
Christy says
Well let’s see… We moved into our house in Oct. 2011 and the first winter (we live in New Hampshire) our oil lines froze 3 times because there was so much water in the oil tank. Then we had to have our septic system replaced, while they were replacing that they crushed an undocumented dry well on the property which caused the washing machine to back up and spew water everywhere. Oh and then in February… came the ants. Out of every CRACK and CREVICE in our house. We hired an exterminator because we couldn’t keep up with them. They were pouring out of carpets, walls, holes, everything. I came home one day and FLYING ants were coming out of the hole near our furnace in the laundry room. HUNDREDS of them. Not a great first 6 months of home ownership!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh no!
xo
s
KarenH. says
Yeah, those surprises are the worst, aren’t they? Last year I had the whole main drain stack (in the basement, runs from the bathroom upstairs at the back of the house, to the front of the house and down to the northeast corner of the house where the sewer line leaves) replaced after one of the 60 year old cast iron pipes cracked. I was expecting to replace the stack because of those 60 year old pipes, but was planning it during the summer.
Then in June, the 20+ year old AC unit developed a coolant leak, and while the option existed to run down the leak and just fix that, I was looking at the same thing you were with the washer–the unit was at the end of its useful life and there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t develop another leak…and another…and…. So I replaced the AC system. For a moment I thought very seriously about replacing it with a heat pump system (and ending my dependence on oil heat), but I didn’t.
You can see where this is going, right? In the middle of the Polar Vortex Winter of Dooooom? Yeah, I bet you can. Fortunately the boiler is under a maintenance agreement and so far the agreement is covering the repair costs, but the problem isn’t fully solved and I’m starting to worry that it might actually be a combination problem of a 60+ year old boiler system and an electrical system that very close to it’s full usage (50 amp service in the house). So I may have to replace the boiler AND upgrade the electrical service to the house.
:) Feel better??? LOL
YoungHouseLove says
Eeks! You poor thing!
xo
s
Suzette says
Just wanted to give you a heads up on a spelling error:
“during may latest wallpaper removal spree.” I think you wanted to say MY latest wallpaper removal, not may.
I don’t mean to be annoying, I’m a copy-editor; I can’t help it.
I’ll keep reading now…
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks Suzette!
xo
s
Sara says
Do you have the contact info for the drywall guy? I’m in Chesterfield too and we have a similar hole in our ceiling :-) Thanks!
YoungHouseLove says
I shared his contact info earlier in the comments (I’d repost it but I’m in the car on my phone). Hope it helps! He was awesome :)
xo
s
My Crappy House says
When I first bought my crappy house, I had leaking in the basement every time I took a shower. After multiple calls to the plumber, they concluded that roots had grown into my pipe in the yard. After digging up the yard to expose the pipe, they found a cesspool on the verge of collapse. So, MY plumbing issue cost about $5,000 when all was said and done. Ahh… home ownership… At least I know I’m good in the “duty” department for many years to come.
Rebie says
What perfect timing for your post. I definitely feel your pain as my husband and I have been dealing with plumbing issues this week. We’re first time home buyers and purchased a 1950’s ranch with built out attic. We’ve been in the house for just over a month and now we are replacing a sewer line….oh and I’m about to deliver baby #2 in two weeks. Plus we found out the previous owner had knowledge of this sewer issue and did not disclose it. So needless to say our new home honeymoon is over. Ugh! Your post made me feel a little better that we’re not alone and is a good reminder of all the random troubles that come with home ownership.
Mary says
I’m a little late to the comment party but had to share. My parents are fellow Richmonders, and their toilet was stopped up one day. They plunged, they snaked, they used Draino (or something like that), and they plunged and snaked some more to no avail. And it started to smell terribly. When my Dad finally got the help of a friend, they took the toilet out to figure out what the issue could be. A SQUIRREL had gotten in the pipe and then got stuck in the toilet, and the Draino had essentially…preserved him. Not. Pretty. I suppose it was a free fix, but I think pain and suffering might come close to outweighing the lack of expenses. Definitely went down in family lore though!
YoungHouseLove says
No way!!
xo
s
Lindsay Osborne says
This inappropriate sloping-situation is something I deal with in the apartment I live in, in Italy. The landlord divided an apartment into 3 and did everything as cheaply as possible, and I share the pipes with the other two tenants (as well as the electricity and the doorbell-imagine having to check with the neighbors every time you want to cook or wash laundry so you don’t cause the breaker the flip, and getting the loud buzzing doorbell at midnight when the 3 year old is asleep because there’s a party next door) and it has a virtual no-slope. So, luckily I didn’t have to deal with sewage recently, but there was a lot of spaghetti and garlic washing up in my shower and it smelled like a warm italian buffet. I called the building administrator who finally sent the plumbers-at 5:30am. Seriously, who works at 5:30am? In Italy, you’re lucky to get someone between lunch and wine breaks 3 months after you’ve called. At least my 3 year old slept through most of it, and the good part about renting is that I didn’t have to pay for it. And I suppose it is rather funny looking back. But I’d be lion if I said I was anti-slope. Too soon?
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, too soon!
xo
s
Gretchen says
Oh the joys of homeownership indeed! Here’s a quick you’re-not-alone story–
We had been in our house for two years (I think!) and had had three pipe problems (leaking, coming apart at the joints, causing big drywall damage) all in our master bath. The first two times we just fixed it ourselves, patched up the wall (and tile, sigh) and always shut the water off if we left on vacation, but the third time we finally dug a little deeper. Turned out we had horrible plastic pipe put into all the homes on our street when they were built in the 80s. There had been a class-action lawsuit over them years ago, but we were too late to get in on any of the money. So really the only solution was to have our house entirely repiped with better stuff and pay for it ourselves! Not so fun, but we’re so thankful to have no more leak worries!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man!
xo
s
Alisa says
Polybutylene pipes? I’m guessing that was it. When we lived in NC we had that too. Repiped the whole house because of it to the tune of about 4 grand. I thought we were out of the woods here in NY with copper pipes, but apparently those develop pinhole leaks too. I speak from experience :( You just can’t win with plumbing! ;)
Courtney J says
I feel your pain. We bought our 1965 fixer this past summer. It has the original bathrooms and plumbing. Our sewage backed up into my washing machine (with clothes in it). After my husband and his friends tried to snake it, the problem persisted and we had to call the plumber. Our problem is fixed for now but if it happens again he said we have to dig up the front yard and change the slope of our main pipe. Sounds like fun huh!?!
YoungHouseLove says
Oof that sounds rough.
xo
s
Alisa says
Here in the eastern half of Long Island, there is essentially no sewage system. 90% of all households have… wait for it… CESSPOOLS. Not septic tanks–cesspools. Giant tubs of everything you flush or put down the drain that have to be pumped out every 2-3 years or so, or when you started seeing sewage back up into your lowest drain. Last time the guy was here he put a camera down in there to show me it was “full to the brim.” Attractive.
Worse yet, many of our cesspools were built with cinderblocks 60+ years ago and are now subject to crumbling and collapse. Problem is, to replace with a county-mandated modern septic system, it’ll run you about $10K. I don’t know whose emergency fund covers THAT, but mine sure doesn’t! *shudder*
In our last house we had to repipe the whole dang thing due to defective polybutylene piping and pinhole leaks. Three wall holes? Ha… we had about 30. Nightmares. We recently had a pinhole leak in our copper plumbing here in this house and I swear I developed PTSD.
Plumbing. Hate it.
Jaci says
Hi Everyone,
Just wanted to share on the savings questions what’s worked well for me. I follow Suzi Orman’s advice about savings and work to keep 9 months of all basic living expenses (all bills, mortgage or rent, car payment, food and gas $, etc) into a savings account that you can take the money out if needed in an emergency immediately, and then invest or keep adding to that bottom line # (like what sherri was saying) for overages. I read an awesome book years ago when I was struggling with the “right amount” to save on an already tight single mom budget. You can get it free ebook now online it’s called “The Richest Man in Babylon”. About 100 page book easily read in a sitting of a few hours. The premise is:
No matter what your income is, if it’s $1 or $100,000 or $1,000,000 you should use the 70/20/10 rule. Here’s the breakdown:
70% goes towards living expenses including minimum payments on credit cards. Any bill or necessity goes in this category
20% goes to paying down debt (student loans, old credit balances, anything you owe)
10% goes to SAVINGS. Automatically, no questions asked.
*Once you pay off all debt, your 20% goes into savings.
Once savings is over your 9 month living expense line, you start to invest so your money makes more money. It’s how the man went from the poorest of the poor, to the richest man in Babylon.
On paying off debt, you start using that 20% ONLY for the 1 debt that has the highest percentage rate. Then you work your way down paying one off at a time. (Same goes for student loans)
You really won’t ever notice 10% from salary to savings but it really adds up!!! Hope this helps:)
Jaci
Ps- I’m starting a blog YOUNGFRUGALFABULOUS but it’s not ready yet. Hope to see some of you over there in the future:)
YoungHouseLove says
Great info!
xo
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Sara Adams says
I feel your pain! We bought our house in November 2009 and a mere 3 weeks after we moved in our area hit some unexpected freezing temps. What we didn’t know at the time was that there was an uninsulated water pipe running above the blow-in insulation in the attic. When we got home from work one day our kitchen and dining room were completely flooded with chunks of wet ceiling and insulation everywhere. We then moved out for 3 months while everything was repaired (the water also killed our furnace). The upside was that we got a whole new everything, including a kitchen that we could design ourselves since they had to tear everything down to the studs. The best part was that insurance covered it, although we did pay out of pocket for some very worthy upgrades. It was an interesting first time home buying experience but we have an even better home out of the deal and my husband proposed on the day we moved back in. Glad you guys found the problem and got it fixed!
Michelle says
I wonder if the previous owners are reading your blog and are jealous you aren’t going to love with that plumbing issue for 30 years! ;)
Chocolabmom says
Same thing happened to us when we bought our house. It had been empty for six months, so when we moved in I went about scrubbing the life out of the upstairs bathroom. Lo and behold, the putty around the plumbing joints had shrunk from non-use and now that I had run TONS of water through them, they leaked straight into the kitchen downstairs. Along came the plumbers, who fixed them by replacing with PVC piping instead of old sweat lead, but not before ripping out about 1/3 of our kitchen ceiling. Which remained that way about 2 years because we knew we were going to remodel that upstairs bath and the kitchen, so why bother repairing twice. And my husband is a sheetrocker/taper!! I feel your pain!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man, that stinks!
xo
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Ashley says
We don’t own a house, but we’ve rented several. And the one we currently live in gave us the worst time last summer. There was a week in July when it was 100-110 degrees. The hottest week of the summer by far. Miserable in our house with no air conditioning. And then one morning I went down into our basement to do some laundry and saw/smelled the worst possible thing: water with bits of toilet paper in it slowly creeping out of our laundry room and into the rest of the basement. Our basement is used for band practice – it is filled with music equipment in addition to our excess belongings. We spent the entire day lugging the heaviest things we own out of the basement and cleaning them. And then the rest of the week on the phone with the landlords getting them to organize plumbers and cleaners and whatnot. Horrible. I still have nightmares about it.
YoungHouseLove says
OH NO! I’m so sorry Ashley!
xo
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Lynn W says
Our 1973 built ranch style house in Northern CA actually had a section of pipes underneath the house that was being held up by a stack of rocks!!! Pretty funny and easily fixed.
Hope this is the last of your plumbing problems. Older homes are full of surprises :)
I look forward to reading your blog each day!! Thank you for taking the time and approaching everyday life with such humor. I burst out in laughter often!!!
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks Lynn, you’re so sweet!
xo
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Ann says
Oh man! I feel your pain. We bought our house in December of ’03 and by February of ’04 discovered we had an outdoor gas leak. We called the gas company (wrong move!) and all they did was turn our gas off and tell us to call a plumber to fix it. February with no heat or hot water in the house was no fun. About $4k later and a repair that required a backhoe digging up our back yard, we were done. As we were writing our last of many checks to our plumber, he looked around our fixer-upper house and said, “This place will be nice once you put some money into it!” (!) I can laugh about it now!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man, I’m glad you can laugh about it now!
xo
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Karen says
Does anyone else read this and wonder if any of the previous occupants follow your blog and are now thinking ‘so that’s why we were forever plunging the toilet?’
YoungHouseLove says
Haha! Maybe they had the best luck ever and we somehow were “the straw that broke the toilet’s back.”
xo
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HMC says
It’s actually probably really good that you were using the bathroom, and kept the waste water somewhat moving… We had the exact same thing happen and we knew it and had plans to renovate the entire bathroom, so we didn’t use it (why spend the money if it would be demo’d in a year?). Well, let’s just say we didn’t realize there was $h*t literally still in the pipes and when renovation time came… We had sewer worms and black flies everywhere. It was disgusting!!! A DIY lesson that will forever be the most disgusting thing ever!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh no!!
xo
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Miranda says
Congrats on making your home so much better, even the inner workings of the plumbing! You have done right by yourselves, and future residents.
I apparently have a broken or rotted-out pipe leading from the kitchen sink/dishwasher to the main drain line in my condo, which is on a slab and dates back to the 70s. The plumbers say they will need to move a countertop and cabinet and then jackhammer through the floor and slab to get to this pipe, and then try to put everything back. (!!!)
I have another plumber and a contractor coming next week for second opinions. Hoping for an alternate route that does not involve a jackhammer, maybe through the yard? If it does, so be it, but wow.
YoungHouseLove says
Ack, good luck Miranda!
xo
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Mimi says
Sellers have a duty to disclose latent defects. IMO this would still qualify as a latent defect even with the water stain on the ceiling, because there is no way that someone would know the toilet backed up into the shower unless they used the toilet and shower before purchasing the home.
YoungHouseLove says
Alas, this house was empty for over a year before we bought it, and we bought it as-is (so we knew it was a big fixer upper, although they didn’t specifically tell us about this one issue). We just can’t believe it was original to the house- what builder thought that bad pipe angle would ever work?!
xo
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Joseph says
On the “homeowner woes” front I’m right there with you. We’re not using our bathroom sink right now because it stops up and we don’t know why. Thankfully the toilet is fine but we really need to get a plumber out here.
On the “backed up toilet” front, I used to work at Ukrops and one day all of the public restrooms backed up. When the plumber got there and snaked the pipes the clog turned out to be someone’s tighty whities…
YoungHouseLove says
NO WAY! I don’t even want to think about how (or why) those got in there.
xo
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Gail says
We live in a 200+ year old home. We never flush feminine products. And after reading these comments, I don’t think I’d do it in a new house either.
el says
Plumbing woes are no fun…at all. Here’s our tale. The hubs and my dad embarked on a little reno of our 2 upstairs bathrooms putting in tile floors, painting, and a little beadboard in one of them. When they went to nail in the baseboard they hit a pipe! Oh no! So they shut off water to the house and we all went to stay at my parents for the night. It was quite late and I was 7 months preggo at the time, in need of working water. When we came back the next day there was water leaking through the ceiling into the main floor of the house. We ended up needing to replumb the whole house. We hired a contractor to redo ceilings, floors, painting, etc. plus some upgrades that we had been wanting to do. We moved back in on my due date. I didn’t get to do much nesting but we are definitely enjoying the remodeled house! We refer to it as “The Flood” and use it as a time marker, such as Before The Flood. Crazy times.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh my gosh, El! What a nightmare! So glad it’s all solved now though.
xo
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Meredith @ La Buena Vida says
OH man. So sorry that you guys had to deal with that! Isn’t it frustrating when you find something wrong like that? I don’t know about you guys, but whenever something like that happens to us (which is a lot lately it seems!), I can’t help but wonder what ELSE is lurking behind our walls!
My recent joys of home ownership story is that we found out on Sunday that we need to replace all the light fixtures in our house. One of them suddenly had an alarming and suspicious black ring around it–when we pulled it down, all the coating had melted off the wires and they were arcing. An electrician friend stopped by and said it looked like someone had put 100 watt bulbs in there previously when they are supposed to be 60 watt bulbs and that all the fixtures looking they need to be replaced. He didn’t think it was an issue with housewide electrical, but it’s hard not to worry about that, especially now that we discovered that the boxes for the fixtures are not even attached to studs or metal rods–just dangling! Boo for poor workmanship!!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man! So sorry about that Meredith!
xo
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Ginny says
We actually had two plumbing problems in January! Our house is only nine years old, so when we have a problem, we kind of scratch our heads. Our first problem occurred during the first polar vortex. One morning, out of the blue, the hot water in the bathroom sink didn’t work. As in when you turned the single-handle faucet to hot, nothing came out. Not even a trickle! Hubby took apart the faucet, but didn’t find anything wrong. We have a PEX plumbing system, so there’s not a lot we can do ourselves. It took two calls to find a plumber who worked with PEX, but as it turned out, as soon as we tried the fix he suggested (turn on the hot water in the tub, then try the sink faucet), it worked! When we called the plumber back to say all was well, he said it could be a piece of ice temporarily blocked the line. Strange, but possible since we’ve never had weather that cold since we moved in. It wasn’t ten days later – and my husband had hurt his back at that point – when I looked into the kitchen one Friday night to find Hubby standing at the sink with the plunger. Both sides of the sink were plugged! (In hindsight, the disposer had been sounding strange for a while, but we thought it was going to die.) We ended up removing the plug from the trap, but couldn’t find our snake, so all we could do was stick a screwdriver in there as far as it would go. The water and uh, crud, eventually went down in both sides of the sink, but so slowly we knew there was probably a big clog in the drain line. This time hubby called the company that did the plumbing for the house since he knew they would probably come out on a Saturday. The guy on call made a suggestion that didn’t work, so he came out and banged on the sink (I think – I wasn’t there) really hard a few times and the clog cleared! He said our disposer isn’t very good and we probably put too many large pieces of food down it, which didn’t grind up well and eventually clogged the drain. The best news was that he didn’t charge us since he didn’t take any tools off the truck. So far, so good.
Deborah, England says
Welcome to the plumbing from hell club! We managed less than 3 months before a issue with a toilet revealed the previous owners had concreted the cistern to the wall and bricked up the stopcock! Planned bathroom renovation moved from the following year to next day! A funnier one was when renovating a house a few years back we realised that the hot water had been fed into the toilet cistern – we wondered why the toilet was always clean and warm to sit on – LOL
YoungHouseLove says
No way!
xo
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Jennifer says
I feel your plumbing pain! Last january, we had to dig a trench across the length of our finished basement because a pipe broke under the foundation. In july, that little project was completed with new carpet (laid by pros) and laminate wood floors (laid by us).
Fast forward to THIS january and that cold front that came through virginia. Our pipes froze and broke in the basement (while i was gone, naturally) and i came home to a waterfall in the basement, a caved-in drop ceiling and squishy carpet. (An understatement). Yup… They had to remove carpet padding, rip out all that new laminate, and make me cry in the process. Today we are re-doing the laminate. At least we are faster this time around! Glad your tragedy is done. :)
YoungHouseLove says
Oh my gosh, that stinks Jennifer!
xo
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