Home Renovations: Things Going Awry

Last Sunday I arrived at my house shortly after my parents did and started putting a few groceries away.  That’s when I heard it… a small *drip drip drip* at the corner of my kitchen.

I saw water pooling on the counter top and on the floor, which seemed to be originating out of the top most cabinet door.

I yelled frantically for Bob to come upstairs (from the basement).  He checked the second floor bathroom (above the drips of water) and then checked the basement – with no insight as to why this was happening.

We turned off the water to the house in attempt to stop the leak.

Then Felix and I proceeded to stand in horror as we watched my step dad ripping into my upper cabinets, kitchen ceiling & upper floor joist to locate the source of the leak.

I nearly cried.  My home was being ripped into in order to find the location of the leak.

In this corner alone, there was so much debris from the small demo corner!  It was like 4″ high of rubble on the counter and we filled the garbage can twice with wood pieces & plaster.  I was not prepared for this either – I can’t even fathom how much debris is going to be creating by demo-ing the whole kitchen ceiling.

Here’s a vine video of the demo and a second of some debris.

A few things did come of this – which was good to find out now rather than later:

  • Two ceilings were installed.
    • The original plaster and lathe is in quite bad condition but instead of someone ripping it out like they should have, they just added another ceiling on top of the old one.
  • The upper cabinets aren’t actually cabinets but ply wood pieced together – horribly -to look like pseudo cabinets.  They need to be ripped out, but we will retain the original cabinet doors, as those are actually cabinet doors.
  • The floor joist under the bathroom is completely rotted out & has been sustaining water damage for years.  This now needs to be addressed and rebuilt.
    • With rotted joists, how have I not been falling through the floor?!  Let’s table that for now…
After the preliminary demolition, the leak stopped.  We turned on the water to the house and no more leak.  We ran the sink, flushed the toilet – but no more leaking.
BUT… the water to the bath/shower stopped working.  Entirely!  There is now no water flowing into the bathtub/shower.
Fun.

Solution: 

Since the pipes aren’t really the best, we’ve decided to abandon the old pipes and add new copper pipes instead for the second floor plumbing.  It’s not worth my dad’s time to actually hunt down the leak and fix it since the pipes are just ‘so so’.
I failed to mention… the bathroom in our house was supposedly refinished in 2009.  It now seems like they only added a nice facade to cover up all of the issues – leaking pipes, horrible ceiling, & rotted floor joists.
*OMG* Yes… I freaked out a bit and started asking myself “Did I just buy a horrible, not-worth-it house?!”
After talking more with my dad and also with Felix, I calmed down.  But yeah… this is more work (and a bit more $$$) than we were planning on doing.
I just really hope that nothing else huge has to happen as I don’t think I can handle any more.  :|  Felix and I knew this was always going to be an adventure, but now we’re joking that this is a crazy adventure.
Please… wish me luck.  Any of you have any crazy house stories you’d like to share to calm my frazzled nerves.

In: House Adventures

Blogger for 6 years and counting, I am a passionate creator who loves to tinker.

Comments (24)