Leaks Fixed: Check

Monday morning, three men showed up at my house with a jackhammer, a shovel and various other tools. They cut up my ugly linoleum, jackhammered up my kitchen floor in front of my sink, took out both my toilets and tore out my bathroom floors.

In the kitchen, the discovered that the leak is encased in concrete in the beam. How a pipe in concrete can be leaking, I don’t know. But, rather than a traditional repair, my option was to re-line the pipe. So today, they came to put the epoxy seal-liner in the pipe, and right now, I have an air compressor keeping a balloon inflated in the pipe. The epoxy has to cure for 24 hours, so they’ll come back tomorrow to collect the compressor and backfill the giant hole in front of my sink.

In the bathroom, the problem was readily apparent and fixable. From the toilet, a pipe descends into the ground, then bends 90 degrees and connects to the sewer pipe to carry away the flushes. Except in my bathrooms, the pipes didn’t ‘connect’ but rather ‘abutted’ each other. Hence the leak and the ‘hump’ in my living room/hall way.

I took pictures, but the house is 30+ years old, so I don’t know that we’ll have any recourse with the builder. In any case, it’s fixed. However, there are three things I’m peeved about that will be taken care of. 1) During the demolition of my hall bath, the demo man (and he admitted this and brought it to my attention) lost control of the jackhammer and dented my wall. 2) During the extraction of the toilet in my bathroom, a tumbler was knocked from the side of my sink and was broken. Crappy thing is that it was part of a 5-piece set and can’t be replaced individually. 3) During the excavation of the hall bath, I believe dirt from the hole was placed in the bathtub without any plastic liner. Now my bathmat is a horrid orange color, and where the bathtub was scratched, I now have orange stains in the tub. These details, and pictures will be sent to the owner of the company.

On the bright side, I will get new floors! Last night we went to Home Depot and picked out tile for the kitchen, baths, and entry. Even though the entry wasn’t torn up, we’ll re-do it anyway while we have the tile cutter. And, I can’t have pretty new floors without redoing the ugly kitchen cabinets. They’re practically mediaeval. So, I picked out some samples for the kitchen, hall bath, and living room. What do you think? I like how the paint manufacturers are putting together color combinations. It really helps decorating challenged people like me. Within the next three weeks, we should have closed on the house and then we can finish these projects, and a couple of others including a new back patio door, and new bifold doors for the hall closets and laundry closet. I’m excited!