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).
[email protected] says
So that explains why we have to plunge our toilets everyday too… except we live on a single floor house. Never in my life have I had to use a plunger so much until this house.
Jill says
Ours was a smell issue. We kept smelling whiffs of sewer on the 3rd floor of our townhouse and couldn’t find the source. Numerous expensive plumber visits occurred, where they snaked everything, took off both toilets and resealed the wax rings, snaked everything again, resealed both toilets again…. but the whiffs of sewer persisted. Some plumbers thought I was crazy, and some blamed the neighbors! Finally, like 5 years into this problem, one day a water stain developed on the dining room ceiling below. A new plumber cut into the ceiling and discovered that the flange on one toilet had never been sealed. (You know, with the purple glue for PVC.) The flange merely rested on top of the drain pipe, with the subsequent sewer gas escaping periodically. Having it get loose enough to leak water was actually a blessing!
Homeowner insurance wouldn’t pay for the plumber, but it would pay for the “damage caused”, ie: drywall repair. However, as you discovered, that was the small bill. It didn’t even meet our deductible.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man!
xo
s
fraser says
We just moved into our first “big girl/big boy” SFH and about 2 weeks after closing found that the upstairs bath leaks a small amount of water into the ceiling above the shower in the downstairs bath. So far it’s just moisture and I punctured the drywall so any water could drip out. But come on, man! Ahh old houses…
Sara says
Can I just tell you that this post has me freaked out?! We have a small water stain on our ceiling also, but I assume the previous owners solved that issue when they remodeled the upstairs bath. I’m now going to pray for no YHL plumbing issues. Ha!
We had our boiler go out on us at the beginning of January. With the subzero temps & high winds, our upstairs baseboard heat pipes froze before help could arrive. Long story short, pipes cracked, patches didn’t hold, water all over 2 upstairs bedrooms and down walls & ceilings below. We have been out of our house since, because it was too messy with 2 small children. We will hopefully be back in next week with new walls, insulation, fresh paint, and new carpet.
Isn’t owning a home fun at times?!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh Sara, I’m crossing my fingers for you! I bet it’s nothing. We just had bad luck ;)
xo
s
paintergal says
Oh, dear. You really have me worried about the water damage on the ceiling under our upstairs bathroom now. We bought this house four months ago and didn’t see that damage until after living here for a couple of months. Because, who really looks at closet ceilings when purchasing a house? Apparently, we don’t! We will be tearing up the bathroom floor sometime in the future. Here’e hoping there aren’t floor issues when we do!
YoungHouseLove says
Hope it’s all a-ok! I think in a lot of cases if they’re old and dried up they’ve been remedied years ago, just not always primed and painted. Here’s hoping!
xo
s
Amy says
We adore our house and the previous owners took fabulous care of it. BUT. The past-its-expiration-date furnace died three weeks after we moved, when I was 37 weeks pregnant. The attached A/C (which we didn’t replace because we could have gotten a few more years for all we knew!) died on a 95 degree day so I spent a lot of time at the mall with a 1-year-old and a newborn!
Our crowning climate control glory is the venting system, though. In an attempt to provide more headroom, somebody replaced sections of our basent air vents with a winding maze of rectangular vents attached to circular ones (nooooo) looping in U shapes around the ceiling beams. (NOOOO). I actually love pointing it out to any furnace/air techs just to see their faces. It’s the little joys!
Erin says
We moved in and were going to meet our friends that helped us for dinner. I went to take a shower and the shower head started spraying everywhere. I had to go to our old and empty apartment to take a shower. It was an easy fix, but I think we both thought we had made a major mistake finally taking the plunge in buying our first house.
Annalea says
Leak lesson extraordinaire:
Ten years ago, we built a house. (That’s the short version. lol)
The first spring we lived there, as the snow melted in the spring rains, the basement developed a leak. It had been carefully waterproofed, but the chink in the armor was the electrical panel in the utility room (which housed the radiant heat boiler, the water heaters, and the electrical panel). That’s the only place in the walls of the considerable basement (it was just under 2,000 sq ft) that had any kind of breach. When we first found the leaking, water was trickling gently in around the a little portal that allowed the gas line to come into the house. At that point, I was singing praises because I had absolutely insisted on a drain in the concrete floor (in case of boiler failure or water heater trouble). So, we went to bed, and figured we’d figure out how to seal up the trickle in the morning.
The next morning, we went down to check again, and noticed that water had now started to trickle out from underneath the electrical panel (situated just above and to the left of the previously mentioned holes in the wall). Upon opening the panel door, we were met with a full-on waterfall straight over the face of the huge panel. AAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!! The water was not coming in around the portal above the panel, where the fat ol’ electrical line came into the house. (Thankfully the water wasn’t IN the pipe that brought the electric line in–only around it.)
We found out (posthaste!) from an electrician that, strong odds were, our panel would be just fine. We just needed to get that wall unearthed ASAP so the water could drain somewhere else. We turned off the power, and a great many hundreds of dollars later, we had the basement wall exposed, quickcrete slapped all around the previously-only-foamed-with-insulation-spray openings, a french drain installed (that ran the length of that wall and diverted the water out to the downhill side of the house), and the wall backfilled properly.
Through that process we realized that the panel, et al, had been placed in the path of the drainage from the entire front yard, part of the driveway and ALL of the large parking area . . . and since we had backfilled properly (gravel against the house, with native clay soil after that) the area of gravel against the basement wall had filled up like a marble-filled vase, which meant there was a lovely reservoir of water which then found its way past the (NON waterproof) foam insulation and through those openings in the wall.
So, long story short, I feel for ya. :-)
Annalea says
Er, “the water was NOW coming in . . . ” doh.
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, I knew what you meant ;)
xo
s
Becky Q says
Oh man! We feel you on the upstairs bathroom woes. When we bought our house 2 years ago… we started moving in, someone went to the bathroom and then we went to grab lunch. When we came back, there was water dripping into our kitchen and giant wet spots on the ceiling. The. Day. We. Moved. In.
Alas, we had old galvanized plumbing and after a “quick fix” the plumber told us that in these old homes, once a galvanized pipe goes, its much better to replace them all as leaks will likely start springing in other locations due to the cuts. Sure enough, two days later, there was another leak further down the pipe.
To add insult to injury, in 1938 they apparently built this house to withstand a bomb because our pipes were CEMENTED into the floor. So, we had to open up all the walls (cue in your first bathroom “mesh” experience) and gut the entire 75 year old bathroom. This was immediately after we had saved every ounce of money just to get into the home! 4 months of trucking to the basement bathroom, lugging thousands (literally) of pounds of cement, wire mesh and huge tiles, and doing nearly all of the bathroom ourselves – we got a great renovation, but man was that a not-so-fun new homeowner experience.
After this incident I’m sure you guys now feel a lot more satisfaction in projects when you know your plumbing and electricity are fresh and updated along with everything else – I know we do! When walking into a potential house for anyone now, looking at plumbing and electricity is way more important to me now than aesthetics!
YoungHouseLove says
It’s true! That peace of mind is nice, even if it’s expensive sometimes! Haha!
xo
s
Brooke says
Our contractors forgot to cap a sewage pipe in the crawl space under our house at the end of a major remodel project. When our sewer line got a clog a few months later, instead of backing up into the house, all our waste just dumped into our crawl space. And a few months after that (yeah, do the math, grooooooossssss) we discovered the problem because we were installing some electrical wiring under the house for landscape lighting and one of our landscapers announced, “It looks like there’s a lot of toilet paper down there.” Hazmat suited men arrived at our house within hours. I still shiver to think about it. Glad you guys figured your issue out before anything much nastier occurred!
YoungHouseLove says
OH MANNNNN. That sounds BAD! So sorry Brooke!
xo
s
Jordan says
Man, I feel like we’re playing right along with you guys! We moved into our house within a few weeks of you, and everything seems to be going on along the same timeline! Our issue was the kitchen sink, which would get clogged here and there but after some draino or plunging we could get it to go down, and it was only happening every month or so. We had a plumber come out and fix the disposal when it broke, and he did a few little things and said we should be good to go. But a few weeks later we weren’t good at all! We called a different company and they came in and did a hyrdro blast (a newer technology twice as expensive as snaking, but a 100% guarantee of a fix, and they gave us a video of the inside of our pipes afterwards!) It solved the problem and got years of grease build up out, but they ultimately recommended we lift one end of the pipe so that there is more of a slant instead of completely horizontal. Luckily that was one thing we could do ourselves. But yeah, I feel ya on the unexpected homeowner expenses! Cutting into the ceiling like that would’ve had me freaking out!
nikki says
Is this something the previous owners should have disclosed to you? If so, do you have recourse?
Love your blog :) I’m near the end of my three-year reno. I also have mysterious water stains on my ceiling that, clearly, i need to get worried about!
YoungHouseLove says
Sadly this house was vacant for over a year, so it’s hard to know whether issues compounded over that time. In general, this house was sold “as-is” as a complete fixer upper (there was a hole in the roof where rain was pouring into the attic) so there’s not much recourse for anything, especially stuff hiding behind the walls. We lived here a while without having a clue, so it’s one of those tricky things.
xo
s
Krissy says
This one time, our pipes froze… but only the draining ones. So I went to take a shower, and the water couldn’t drain. and all kinds of “funk” that was stuck in the drain pipe came out of the pipe and into the tub with the water that couldn’t go anywhere. So I was standing in like 3 or 4 inches of nasty water. I needed to get to work, though, so I powered through, sat on the edge and washed my feet last before getting out, and let Nathan handle defrosting the pipes… which involves crawling under the house (in the dirt, there’s no foundation) with a hair dryer and warming them up. On the bright side, there was no poop involved since it was only the shower :)
YoungHouseLove says
Never knew that could happen! So crazy!
xo
s
Emily says
Hah!! I have always thought Sherry looked liked Topanga, but I thought I was crazy! If you watch Parenthood, you guys also remind me a bit of Drew and Amy too, which is weird, because what are the odds that 2 characters who are dating one another would be reminiscent of you both? Plus they’re just adorbs.
Glad you got your pipes taken care of–hope your next saga isn’t too bad!
YoungHouseLove says
That’s funny! Someone else said John looked like Drew. We don’t watch it but we’ll have to check it out. The funny thing is that we have met like ten other couples named John and Sherry. What are the odds of that? I guess since John is such a common name that helps, but it’s so funny how many Sherrys marry Johns!
xo
s
[email protected] says
You sell your bathroom short, I actually wrote “worst toilet in Scotland” on our third floor bathroom door when we moved in, which is ironic being that the toilet had been smashed and left in pieces in the backyard at some point during out houses’ slow decent into hellholedom. But hey, be happy the plumbing fix didn’t involve harm to your cute blue tile!
YoungHouseLove says
Hahaha! I love that you actually wrote that. Such an esteemed title!
xo
s
Lauren says
Where did you guys find the extra long shower curtain? The previous owners of our house “installed” a basement bathroom and it is horrendous (blue re-bath shower covering a window, giant hole in the wall for ?? access to plumbing maybe ??) Anyway, we too are doing a Phase 1 update and I think hanging a floor to ceiling shower curtain will help me forget about the ugly for awhile.
YoungHouseLove says
Amazon.com! It was a while ago, but I searched “extra long shower curtain or 95″ shower curtain” – good luck!
xo
s
Sara says
I had a hole in my ceiling for the past 2 weeks as well. 4 years ago we had a water line run through the attic of our rancher for an ice maker. Turns out the water line wasn’t properly insulated, froze during the polar vortex, and burst. My three year old got a kick out of telling everyone about the rain in our living room. We turned off the water and had the line repaired. 5 days later We heard a huge crash In the living room. The ceiling had collapsed from the weight of wet insulation! We were all home and super lucky no one was hurt, since the collapse was right over the couch where I sit and feed my baby! After that, I had a couple different plumbers come out to tell me how to run the line in a way that was better insulated and up to code and got a range of opinions including fix it immediately and leave it alone. Since the ceiling was open, we decided to run the line through the floor where it was properly insulated. Everything is fixed and we just finished cleaning up. Last night, THE NEW WATER LINE FROZE! Can’t win!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh no!!!!
xo
s
Connie says
We actually had this exact same problem…except ours flooded out and ruined the top and main floor. Cost ten grand. All over a non sloping pipe.
YoungHouseLove says
OH MY GOSH! I’m so sorry Connie!
xo
s
Angela, blue i style says
Oh, the joys of home ownership! We dealt with a plumbing issue recently and still have the hole in our ceiling to prove it… you are not the only ones! Back in December noticed a spot on the ceiling in our finished basement that looked a bit discolored. At first we thought it was just dirty from one of us putting our hand on the ceiling while changing the light bulb in the fixture right by the spot. But a couple of nights later it was clearly a bubble in the drywall, and not just a dirty spot. That’s when we knew we’d better call a plumber! I called first thing the next morning, but unfortunately it was the first day in a string of sub-zero termperatures and we couldn’t find anyone available for days. When I finally got a plumber out to our house, he walked into our utility room and came back out about 5 seconds later to tell me it was an HVAC problem and not a plumbing problem. Great! Still in the midst of sub-zero temperatures, it was another waiting game to get an HVAC guy out to our house. At the end of the day, we learned that an a pipe running from our furnace to the outside of the house that is supposed to simply be an air return, but which can get condensation built up in it, was leaking. Why was it leaking, you ask? Because when the house was built the builder didn’t use any glue where the coupler joined two lengths of pipe. Dohhhh! So it had been slowly leaking for 5 years, and finally got bad enough to bubble the drywall. Luckily it didn’t cause any mold problems!
Erin says
In our house doing any project turns into something much bigger. I call it my “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” Theory, where one small thing leads to another, and another, etc. For example, we noticed that when it rained our dining room had water leaking from the window. We had a roofer come out and give us an estimate of $2500 to replace the front shingles, so we went for it. Upon removing the shingles, they found that the roofing board needed to be replaced, the dormers needed to be reconstructed, which led to siding needing to be replaced,the windows fell out when they were installing new flashing, so in went new windows, and then new casings and trim had to be installed (which my dad did). When we got the bill for $8500 I almost passed out We’re still recovering from that!
Kelly says
This is very timely! Just this morning when we opened the door to the garage to go to work we found our sewer line has backed up for the third time in less than a year onto the garage floor (not nasty stuff, but just smelly water so far). We (and our plumber) believe it is due to land shifting in our driveway that is shared as part of our townhome’s HOA. Our sewer pipe has broken and separated and our water line coming in has also pulled apart once (the same day we had our first “surprise” in the garage).
Not looking forward to the battle between home insurance, HOA board, city, and Caltrans (there’s a retaining wall immediately below us holding up our entire hill, and we are the closest unit to it.) Not giving up hope yet that it is solely on us to finance. Wish us luck!
YoungHouseLove says
Lots of luck! And thanks to everyone for sharing their stories today. It’s definitely tricky stuff to deal with, but it’s so nice of everyone to commiserate!
xo
s
Syl says
A month after moving into our house we had all the water from sinks, showers, and toilets(eeek) back up into the utility sink in our basement. We only go to the basement to do laundry so we didn’t notice the back up until the utility sink overflowed. Well, we have a huge maple tree in our front yard (I promise this is related), and we found out that the roots have been and will continue to grow into our sewage line. The tree will have to be taken down eventually, but we can’t bring ourselves to cut it down just yet. I gotta say that plumbing problems are the worst, it’s hard to find something worse than cleaning up sewage!
Alana says
Our worst disaster story was coming home from a week long vacation to a flooded basement. The worst part? Our master bed, bath and walk-in closet are in the basement. We left our suitcases upstairs and immediately had to begin removing/drying our furniture (or in some cases throwing it away), ripping up 30 year old carpet and padding, and hitting up Home Depot for fans and a shop vac.
The positive from this was that it led us to redoing (DIY of course) our whole master suite. I fixed the water entry point (came in under the rotted door threshold), but we opted for carpet tile just in case water ever decided to enter again.
That story even beat out the time I “fixed” a small leak in the bath plumbing only to have the new pipe joint burst and cause a waterfall/geyser in the wall between our closet and bath. Gotta love owning a home :)
Emily @ Life on Food says
So far no plumbing problems for us…our dishwasher died the other day and because they built floors up around it the only way to get it out is to tear out half the kitchen. Not sure what we are going to do about that just yet.
Anna says
We bought our condo in May, knowing that we had an old forced hot water boiler… we just didn’t know how old. We had a free energy audit done, and turned out our boiler was 53 years old! So replacing that thing was one of the first major expenses we had to shell out as home owners. And then… on the first super freezing day of the winter (9 degrees high), our heating stopped working in the middle of the night. Luckily, the boiler was on warranty, and our plumber was able to fix the problem, but it took most of the day. We ran so many space heaters to keep our 4-month-old baby warm that we blew a fuse!
nora says
I moved into a house after my first house had burned. I was by myself and was always out of the house. I just used it to sleep in. Anyway after a year living there I gave a party. The toilet overflowed into the shower. After the party I called the plumber who told me that I had roots in the line. I paid him and all was good for a few months. Then I had out of town guests. The toilet overflowed and again I had sewage in the shower. This time my plumber check all around and found out I was not connected to the city sewage line. All my bathroom waste had been going out on the side of the house. Gross!!! I did not know this since I never went to the back yard. The city had put in new lines and the person who owned the house had never paid to connect to the new line. I had to pay to be connected and have a line dug out. About 3,000 dollars later I was finally connected to the sewage line.
Jaimie says
That sounds horrifying! And no wonder you had all that paper build up. Yuck.
BTW, totally in love with your bathroom tile. The space looks so fresh and airy without that wallpaper.
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks Jaimie!
xo
s
Sarah says
Howdy! I just recently found this little treasure on the internet! Our plumbing involves a yearly visit from the plumber to send in one of those machines that cleans out the pipes at our main drain hole in our yard… its officially included in our budget to save up the money for it each year. Not a pleasant bill, but those pesky tree roots get into the way every year…
YoungHouseLove says
Smart! Gotta love preventative maintenance!
xo
s
Lisa says
I feel your pain. We started out fixing a drain in the basement and ended up jackhammering out the line from the basement floor. We had the exact same problem as you. Ours had been gradually filling up over 50 years. *Nasty* Luckily we know some awesome plumbers and my husband jackhammered out the floor himself. Of all the home improvements I thought we’d be doing in that house, that wasn’t one of them. Its good to get things fixed the correct way though. :)
Sarah says
We are renting but we ran into a similar problem as you. I thought I was going crazy because I swore that I could hear dripping now and then when I was sitting on the couch in our living room, which is below our bedroom and bathroom. Well, one day, I was pretty sure I saw a waterdrop forming on the ceiling and then I looked and saw a small wet spot on the floor – directly below our toilet. Turns out, the seal around our toilet was old and not doing its job so water was leaking into the space under the floor and above the ceiling. It seemed like clean water so we’re hoping it was coming from the filling of the tank rather than the emptying. A few days after the plumber came and fixed that,I wanted to see if the ceiling was still wet. I barely touched it and a hole about the size of a half-dollar opened up. My husband has not yet fixed the hole (going on 9 months). I’m not amused.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man! Good luck with that Sarah!
xo
s
Maria says
The day we closed and moved in to our house we realized that the water was barely dripping out of the faucets. The inspection a week before had passed with flying colors. We ended up dropping $3500 the first week of home ownership on a new well pump and piping. Ouch.
YoungHouseLove says
OUCH!
xo
s
Bobbi says
You aren’t alone – we bought our first house recently. The “brand new” air conditioner had a leak, the downstairs drain had water come back up in the basement (yuck city) and now our foundation has a small hole that lets a small stream of water in. Only one of those was picked up by our home warranty.
Hoping since this is now our third we are done now :)
mp says
In the space of a few days in December, my electrical panel shorted out and an old spindly tree came down in my yard. Then I found out the dryer outlet and plug had been jerry-rigged. By the time it was all over, I’d spent $4300. And then last week my pipes froze. Good times … not.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh MP, I’m so sorry!
xo
s
Mel says
Here’s plumbing/leak/I want to die woe. The first year after buying our house, I got laid off. The lay off was hard enough, but our house decided it was angry. We had a water leaking through our basement fireplace. Every time it rained, and it rained hard that summer, water would come in but we could figure out why. It was great fun in the middle of the night hop vacing the water up. We finally discovered that we have a hole in our fountain. For a few days, we pretty much had a moat in the front of our house. We paid our friends in beer and pizza to help us lay the brick for a new sidewalk that was tore up in the process. A tree in our back yard fell about the same time and luckily only wrecked our garden. Soon after that fiasco was taken care of, we have bunch of family in town for my brother’s wedding, and then the drains started backing up. My dad and my uncles spent a lot of time hovering over our toilet and shower trying to get it taken care of. Nope, enter the plumber to roto root the our sewer line. Our house wasn’t done being mad yet and decided to produce leaky pipes that a friend’s dad helped us replace. And to top off that fine six months, our furnace died. By the time we paid for everything during that time, it was $10,000. You know the kind of money you just have sitting in your sock drawer.
YoungHouseLove says
Ouchie!
xo
s
ggilroy says
Wow you removed the blogroll tab because of two commments???
YoungHouseLove says
There have been other “please update/edit this” requests due to inactive blogs being on the list, blogs that have changed topics, bloggers contacting us and requesting to be added, etc. We’ve actually been considering removing our blogroll for a while (or at least not including it in a blog redesign that we’re working on) because it’s challenging to keep current, and we’ve noticed that blogrolls don’t seem to be as common on other sites anymore. So we just took that feedback as a sign that our instincts might be right to try going without one. We’ll have to see where we end up :)
xo
s
Cathy says
I just have to ask: when you wrote this, did you have any idea the number of tomes you would receive on this topic? I have to say that I rarely read the comments section and have nothing to add in terms of horror stories . . . but I learned a BUNCH reading through the experiences of your readers/friends.
May we all be grateful for our indoor plumbing that (for the most part) works.
YoungHouseLove says
It’s amazing! We had no idea so many people would commiserate. It has been amazingly comforting and terrifying. Haha!
xo
s
Zohreh Daly says
Okay! I have a story for you!
Last July we were told that we were moving to Austin, Texas and basically had six weeks to prep, stage, sell, and move. During the “prep” stage we needed to get the basement fixed up (old 1922 colonial). During the process the washer overflowed onto my newly painted basement floors. Ugh. I wiped everything up and went to Lowe’s for a new PVC pipe to replace the old, rusted iron pipe that was used for washer drainage.
After selecting the pipe like a boss, wielding the 10 footer in my cart without knocking anything over, it was time to load up. I put the pipe into the RAV4 and without really thinking (at all), I placed the pipe onto the dash and gave the back hatch a good ol’ slam. The pipe broke the windshield. Crap.
So I get the pipe home but I’m unable to get the old pipe out. Fret not! My friend has a saw! He saws away at the old pipe, cutting into into pieces that can easily be taken out. We had rented a dumpster for all the crap we were getting rid of and being the oddly lazy person I am, I decided to just toss the rusted, nasty pipe into the dumpster instead of opening the back hatch. Strangely enough, I was afraid I would hurt my finger on the locking mechanism. But as I threw the pipe into the dumpster, I misjudged the trajectory and weight of said pipe. It came crashing down on my hand as I Michael Jordan’ed it over the top of the dumpster. The pain! I looked down. Blood everywhere. I ran to the sink and started to rinse the wound. My right fingertip was smashed. The nail was . . . . okay. . .this is terrible. . .was off the nail bed at a 45 degree facing me. I started to feel very faint. I got quiet. My husband looked at me and said, “aw, crap” my friends made the sign of the cross. Off to the emergency room.
At the emergency room I was x-rayed and stitched up. I was told that I had broken my finger and that there was a possibility that my nail would never grow back. WHAT?! NO NAIL?! I am a girl! I have to have ten nails. I have to admit, I got a little sad! Vanity. Bah!
Eight stitches later I go home. I am told to rest. The next day my husband and I decide to go get the antibiotics I need from the injury. Now my hand is still completely numb and I lack proprioception. That didn’t stop me from deciding to shut the door. . .right. on. the. hand.
OMG. Primal screams. I am sure a flock of birds flew off from a tree. Windows shook. Glasses clanked in cabinets. It wasn’t that I was in pain (I was numb) but it was just the culmination of everything, moving, selling, and the series of unfortunate events just took such a toll. I was done. DONE! Stick a fork in me!
My husband: Do you want me to just drop you off at the ER?
Me: Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll call you when I’m done.
Fortunately, I didn’t do much more damage to the finger. It eventually healed, I sold my home in a week, and my nail did grow back! Yay! Still paying the hospital bill though. . . $1200! A plumber would have been cheaper! :-P
Maria says
I always try to convince myself that everything happens for a reason. So, a couple of weeks ago when we had that 1st deep freeze, our master bath pipes froze…ugh. Well, after cutting a hole in the family room ceiling, burning out 2 blow dryers pushing heat up there, and putting a space heater against the shower wall for an hour, they unfroze. WELL, my husband couldn’t leave well enough alone, and decided to drill a couple of holes while the ceiling was open to let air flow up through that wall. Yup, you guessed it…he drilled into a pipe…water EVERYWHERE! He made record time down to the basement to shut off the main. We had to call an emergency plumber out to solder the pipe, and $250 later we were back in business! ANYWAY…the good that came out of it, is that the plumber made a burn mark on the family room wall, which i have been wanting to repaint anyway, so that was my motivation to do it! I know, it’s a “lame good thing”, but it works for me!
Autumn says
We’ve had plumbers in our home on & off since this past May, and the $$ has really added up, but I guess it’s one of those things you inherit with a historic home. Our house was built in 1908 & while many modern updates have been added along the way, the pipes are hit & miss. One of the old cast iron pipes suddenly gave way & ruined a corner of our kitchen ceiling…and sadly, just before the third & final sanding of the repair job it started leaking again like a bad, bad joke. So we kind of hold our breath even after fixing things with the aid of pros because homes can still be unpredictable. But we do love it still :-)
Amy says
Oh goodness… I certainly have a mother of all “joys of home ownership” story! I’m single and own my house all on my own so this was quite a financial burden. In mid-August, in the height of the summer heat here in Texas, my outdoor AC unit CAUGHT FIRE and quit working. I didn’t realize it at the time and thankfully it was 100% contained in the unit. I had a guy come take a look it at (that was when I found out it caught fire) – something about it broke and the breakers didn’t trip so the ‘brain’ kept drawing power until it caught fire. Scary. Anyway, they replaced it a day or two later. The day they left, my front door broke. The locking mechanism bent and I couldn’t turn the handle or open the door at all. For two weeks! So then I got THAT fixed and a few days later my 30+ year old garage door broke and needed to be replaced. It was a fun month for me for sure! :)
Erin says
Three days before we were supposed to move into our first home we found a huge leak. Turns out there are two. Boo. So now we have to have the whole house repiped through the attic, (instead of ripping up the slab). Hopefully it’ll be done Monday. Fingers crossed.
Sue says
Oh my, all the horror stories in the comments! Glad that yours wasn’t worse.
When I bought my place, we started having issues with the toilets not flushing well, and the septic field was getting squishy. Called in a guy (this was definitely beyond my skill set). Turned out that not only was the slope from the house to the septic tank wrong (like yours, it went up hill), but the metal tank was totally rusted away, so essentially we had no septic tank. Only cost about 5k to fix. But at least I didn’t have to put in a new septic field.
Carrie M. says
This is long, but boy was it ever a “leak lesson” for us! We had a house built last year, and six months after moving in, our boys stoppered the sink in their bathroom upstairs, started playing and forgot to shut the water off after washing their hands. We discovered this when one of them ran downstairs and frantically asked for our help: almost the entire hallway upstairs was wet and they couldn’t figure out why. After checking that the washer hadn’t exploded, we went down the hall and opened their bathroom door and it was like a scene from a movie–there were literally waterfalls of water gushing from the doors of their vanity. The water was also coming through our downstairs ceiling via the light fixture in the butler’s pantry. (Note: if you hear a constant weird clicking sound for a few minutes, and then even the dog gets up to go investigate, it’s probably worth getting up to go see what it is instead of randomly asking your husband “What’s that noise?” and then going back to ignoring it LOL.)
The kids were so beside themselves when they realized what had happened! We managed to stay calm about it (seriously can’t believe we didn’t even yell)–but really, the looks on their little faces! They both burst into tears and started apologizing and trying to clean it up; nothing we could have said or done would have made them realize any more than they already did what a HUGE thing they’d done. One got a towel, bless him, like that was gonna do anything. :) I called a friend who immediately came and picked them up for a sleepover- we hoped that pizza and a movie and time with friends might calm them down some- while my husband went into clean-up mode. Turns out a wet-dry vac is a great tool in that type of situation. Also our entire linen closet may have made an appearance to soak up all the water we could. :)
Then we called a flood company to come out, as well as the insurance company to start a claim. The flood company came out within the hour and I can’t say enough good things about them. They ended up tearing out wet insulation, wet carpet padding, removing baseboards and parts of ceilings, and set up tons of industrial fans for a few days to completely dry everything out. They came back and retested everything after the fans were done to make sure there was no moisture and no mold and to do a walk-through with the insurance guy to give estimates for fixing everything. Then after a few more days worth of contractors putting the new house back to new shape again, all was well. Thank God for home owners insurance! In total, the water went to 9 rooms over the span of the upstairs, downstairs, basement and garage, and totaled $10,000 worth of damage. Considering that it took about 5 minutes for all this to happen, I’m just happy we hadn’t decided to go out for the evening! I can’t even imagine what we’d have come home to LOL! To this day we still make the boys go back up and double check that they’ve shut the water off after coming out of the bathroom!
Over all, it was a great opportunity to talk about how everyone makes mistakes and to practice forgiveness. :) I’m sure it’s an experience we’ll still be talking about around the dinner table when our boys are grown. “Remember that time water was coming out of the chandelier?!”
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man, what an ordeal!
xo
s
Chelsea says
We have been having furnace issues… First, it would randomly just run and run and heat the house non stop until we flipped the breaker for it (turning the thermostat off didn’t work). And now, the fan won’t automatically kick on. The furnace just heats but won’t blow. So we have to turn on the fan full blast (it’s crazy!) abs turn off the breaker when we want it off. It sucks air in so hard like that, that it sucked the filter in and I had to get a new one today! Installing a new thermostat tomorrow it Saturday and hoping that solves the issue. The furnace is only about 6 years old so I really hope IRS just a thermostat issue!
We also had a skylight leak last winter. Just once oddly enough. Called the roofer who put on our new roof, also 6 years ago, and he found a broken seal. Fixed it in 15 minutes, for free! You win some and you lose some I guess!
Peggy says
Two weeks ago my hubbie was in the attic changing some cables to our tv. Missed placing his foot on the beam and put it through the ceiling in the living room. The drywall guy was just here today to start repairing that hole. So glad we decided to save $30 per month on the cable bill. Ended up costing $200 for repairs.
YoungHouseLove says
OH MAN!
xo
s
Aoife says
I was starting to feel I was the only one! We’ve had on going plumbing problems since we moved in and have spent thousands getting it fixed at this stage. An oil leak contaminated our well, our shower caused a leak in our kitchen ceiling, the hot water tank corroded and leaked through our ceiling, the water pressure was too high and put pressure on the joints causing even more leaks. Now when we see water on the floor we dont think someone spilled something. Our first thought is to check the ceilings. Very stressful!
Judy Clark says
Youngsters, we can relate. As you know Atlanta has been hit hard by freezing temps. One week when it was 7 degrees a pipe froze in our garage. Fortunately hubby was at home, heard the water and was able to fix the pipe and get the 20 gallons of water out of the garage in time…we thought. Unfortunately, the water rushed through the garage into the kitchen, then ran under the cabinets into the great room. Our beautiful hand scraped hardwoods that we put down in 2009 got wet underneath and started to buckle after a few days. Now we have to replaced the living, dining, foyer and hall. Sad Face! The insurance company has been wonderful. We will start work when the temps get a bit warmer. Not happy that we have to go through this again in such a short period of time.
YoungHouseLove says
So glad to hear the insurance company has been awesome to work with! Lucky duck!
xo
s
Jess says
A few years ago at 2:00 am on Christmas Day, I received a call from my tenants telling me that the whole basement of our rental property was flooded with 2-3 inches of stinky water. They had been gone for a few days during the holiday season and had come back to this mess.
We had to call a water damage company to come in on Christmas Day and start clean up. The water was category 4–which I guess means super disgusting sewer back water. It took 4 days and several high powered fans to dry the basement out. They had to tear up the entire floor, 6 inches of drywall and re do everything in the 1000 sq feet of our basement. Our poor tenants!
It turned out that we had roots in the line. The pipes were old (this house was built in 1927) and tree roots had grown into the line and caused it to back up into the house. The first warning was that the water had backed up into the shower. We will eventually replace all the pipes, but for now we just get it rooted out every 3-4 months, which is a few hundred dollars each time. My husband wants to cut down all the trees in the yard, but we aren’t a 100% sure the tree is on our property, plus that makes me sad. So, we had a band-aid fix for now and will eventually spend the 5-10K it costs to do the actual pipe replacing. Worst Christmas Morning Ever! But the house is still a cute 1927 brick bungalow, so I try not to be too mad. :)
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yeah, it’s always those cute ones that getcha. Haha!
xo
s
L says
Wow — I was expecting vent issues (another cause of eeewy backup, esp. in two story houses) but yours was even worse! Amazed, though, that you got the whole thing fixed for less than $1,000. Congrats. And the “new” bathroom is lovely.
Erin says
I feel your pain! Our toilets and upstairs shower have been backing up into our downstairs tub for a while. We originally fixed the problem (or so we thought) with plunging and draino, but a few days ago it was baaaaaad. Like, the whole tub filled up with sewage ready to spill out bad. We had to bite the bullet and call in a pro, who cleared the clog, but he said there’s something blocking our main line – he thinks maybe a tree root grew into it! So now I have to call the county and pray that it’s something they can fix (and hopefully on their dime). Glad your plumbing is fixed now!