We continue to work on the house, but not with quite as much gusto as last spring until recently when we started work on the upstairs bath.
In an attempt to relieve some stress, I decided to start a battle with our upstairs bathroom. I declared war by taking a hammer to the dingy tile. Unfortunately, the 1. tile was extra thick, making it not as satisfying as had hoped, 2. there was about 3/4" of concrete between me and the studs and 3. as I would find out within the next 12 hours for certain, I was coming down with a cold and finding it hard to breath with all of the dust. Matt quickly took over and continued down the wall I had started to behind the toilet. Once reaching the toilet, he picked it up and moved it into the tub.
[Partly demolished tile wall]
I stayed away from the bathroom for the remainder of the evening and the following day. Fortunately, we have 2 bathrooms so while this one was out of commission we just moved our business downstairs.
All of this demolition took place on Sunday night. The next day we went to work like any normal day. However, coming home I was welcomed by something out of the norm.
When I walked into the kitchen I found that our Island had water splattered on it. At first I was curious *tilts head* what have those cats been up to? *switches on light* Wow, that is a lot of water.
Then there was the moment when a droplet of water fell from the sky, I looked up to see a bubble of water in the ceiling, and I realized just exactly where the water was coming from. It was coming from our bathroom! Which is located directly above our kitchen. I sprinted up the stairs (cold and all), noticed that the shut off valve had not quite done its job and was actually leaking water drip by drip onto the floor, which over the past 18 hours had been enough to leak onto the kitchen island.
I looked around at the tile covered bathroom and didn't know what to do. So I ran down to the basement to find the next shut off valve, which was conveniently located above above an are vent and very difficult to turn, I did manage to turn it just a bit just enough to create another leak in the basement, this one was much smaller and onto a concrete floor that I didn't care about, so I gave up on that and sprinted back upstairs (still sick mind you!). I decided that in order to stop the leak I would need to reinstall the toilet, which would involve me clearing the tile that was now surrounding the toilet drain, heaving a very heavy toilet from the tub over and over piles of concrete and tile back to where it belonged. I did this, while asking the toilet (not so politely) to cooperate with me and quickly the problem was temporarily solved.
[note the mess on the floor]
Then I went down stairs [in less of a rush, but still quickly] and tended to the ceiling. I grabbed an old towel, jumped up on the island, and held the towel against the bubble at which point it burst and a small flood of water came down. I pleaded with it to stop and it didn't, at least not right away.
[not to bad]
I have since allowed the ceiling to dry and started to spackle over the damage. With a couple coats of spakle and some paint it will look good as new, but my... what a way to start a week.
As my colleague said after I told her the story, "When it rains, it pours!"
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