On the Homefront

A lot has been happening around our house lately!

I wish I had the time and energy to write in detail about what happened with the water heater “issue” a few weeks ago. It turned into a much bigger ordeal than either of us anticipated. I’ll just give you the short and sweet version:

I was at work on the Friday that the plumbers came to install the new water heater we bought at Lowe’s, and Travis was home with the girls. Earlier in the week, we’d noticed that we could hear water running (in the walls, we thought) even when we didn’t have any faucets turned on in the house. Travis assumed it had something to do with the water heater problem, but even after the new water heater was installed, you could still hear water running when everything was turned off. Womp womp. The plumbers could tell right away that we had a leak somewhere in the house, and it didn’t take long for them to realize it was somewhere under the slab. So, we had to pay a “leak detection” specialist several hundred dollars to find the leak. He used all this fancy equipment to pinpoint exactly where it was. Turns out that it was in the pipe coming up through the slab not too long after it leaves the water heater. The foyer closet is right on the other side of the water heater, so that’s where the problem area was. Once he found the leak, he let Travis listen to it also, and apparently the leak was so forceful that you could hear it moving gravel under the house. Not good.

“X” marks the spot!

The leak detection specialist only detects leaks–doesn’t fix them–so, first thing Saturday morning, another plumber came out to actually dig down through the slab and replace the leaking pipe.

But, before we move on…also on Friday during all of the mayhem, multiple plumbers coming and going, drilling, loud noises, chaos, etc (while I was still at work, so Travis still was on solo duty):

• Brooklyn had an accident in her high chair seat, and it dripped everywhere…through her clothes, onto the high chair seat, the chair underneath, and even the floor…
• One of the cats (not sure who) literally had the poop scared out of them—yes, DIARRHEA UNDER OUR BED. It still smelled by the time I got home from work.
• And Savannah got in on the action—she had a blowout in her crib, and poop was everywhere all over her clothes and her crib sheets.

So, by the time I got home from work: Travis was frazzled, almost every room in the house was torn apart, and we were spending money like it was going out of style. Travis said it was the craziest day of his life. Oh yeah, and we may have replaced the water heater without need. Since the hot water was leaving the heater and immediately going into that leaking pipe, most of our hot water was probably draining right under the slab instead of going throughout the house. Argh. But, it was too late to do anything about it by the time we realized what was going on. Now, we just have a fancy “hybrid” water heater with a heat pump and fancy buttons :) Supposedly it will save a few hundred dollars per year in energy costs, which would be nice considering we’ve spent so much money lately!

Also, that Friday night we were having the Lovelesses and Broadwells over for supper, and we still couldn’t use our hot water (even though we had the new water heater by that point). But, we made the best of it and had a fun evening anyway :) After everyone left, we had to clear out the foyer completely (all of the closet plus the stuff in the foyer itself) in preparation for the work on Saturday.

Brooklyn was wondering, “What is going on??”

It took the plumber 4 or 5 hours on Saturday to drill down through the slab, replace the pipe, pour concrete back into the hole, and clean up. Thankfully, Tyler and Alisha were nice enough to let Brooklyn, Savannah, and I come over for a few hours during the jackhammering…because it was loud! When we got home, this is what the foyer closet looked like:

All finished and drying!

The plumber had to cut out a small section of the sheet rock and baseboard in addition to the large hole in the floor. So, we have some repairs to do! Travis is planning to repair the sheet rock himself (anyone have a small piece we could use??), but we’re planning to pay someone to put in the new flooring once we pick out what we want. Neither of us is interested in tackling that project ourselves!

Currently, we have parquet flooring in the foyer, carpet in the living room and bedrooms, hardwood (that I really don’t even like) in the dining room, vinyl “peel and stick” tile in the kitchen, and horrible dirty linoleum in the bathrooms. Our long-term plan (before this whole fiasco happened) was to put tile in the kitchen and bathrooms and new carpet (at some point) in the living room and bedrooms. We weren’t really planning to replace the floors in the dining room or foyer. So, here’s the dilemma:

Should we just replace the floor in the foyer/foyer closet for now? If so, what should we put? Do we put another parquet floor? Hardwood? Tile? If we put hardwood there, it’s not going to match the hardwood in the dining room. Is that a big deal? Should we rip up the hardwood in the dining room and put matching hardwood in the foyer and dining room? Or, should we get really crazy and put totally new hardwood in the dining room, living room, and foyer?

Right now, our plan is that we’ll live in this house until we pay it off, which will be in another 6.5 years, and then we’ll move somewhere a little bigger. What would you do with the flooring if you knew that you weren’t going to live in the house more than 6 or 7 more years? What would you do in terms of making it attractive for a new buyer? I’m looking for feedback, so I’m welcoming any and all opinions!

The bad news is that once the plumber drilled down and found the leaky section of the pipe, he figured out that it wasn’t even done properly in the first place. Apparently pipes that come up through a concrete slab are supposed to have a sleeve around them to protect them. Concrete is supposedly acidic and will eat through the pipes over time if they aren’t protected. Well, you guessed it…this pipe didn’t have a sleeve around it. And if that pipe didn’t have a sleeve around it, probably none of the other pipes in our house that come up through the concrete have sleeves around them either. The good news is that it took 22 years for this pipe to develop a leak. The bad news is that all of the other pipes in the house are the same “age”. Will we have this problem again in another part of the house before we move??? Here’s hoping we won’t!

It just goes to show you that you never really know what you’re getting when you buy a house unless you do it yourself or you’re there to oversee every single step of the building process. All I know is that we spent almost $3000 in one weekend between the new water heater and the pipe repair, and that doesn’t even include how much we’ll spend on the new floor. But, at least we have a house, even if it has its problems. We could have it much, much worse.

So, what’s your feedback on the new flooring options? At least the torn up section is hidden in the foyer closet, so we don’t feel rushed to replace it right away. But, it’s definitely on the to-do list for sometime in the next year or two!