My Christmas holiday got off to a particularly cold and wet start. Not just because of the atrocious weather outside, but the conditions indoors. My bathroom pipes burst earlier this week in two different bathrooms on two different days.
Monday afternoon was freezing, and so was my house. I had planned to take a shower and go somewhere warmer such as a bookstore, but the downstairs bathroom, which is the coldest room in the house, was so cold that the bathtub handles had frozen and couldn’t be turned. I tried warming up the room and thawing out the pipes by placing the space heater in there.
Big mistake. Minutes later I heard a sharp knock followed by sounds of spaying water. I managed to pull the space heater before it got fried. What followed was an hour of mopping in the bathroom and basement with old towels as well as tearing into the wall trying to get to the burst pipe. That was followed by two trips in the frigid, evening weather to Lowes. I had to make a second trip because my mini-pipe cutter actually snapped in two.
This is where I would like to stop and give a big sarcastic “Thanks a lot!” to the many previous habitants of my house for all their half-assery and numbskullery when making home “improvements”. I’ve seen evidence of cheap, neglectful and outright stupid handiwork in the past, but whoever installed the bathtub over a wall register really scored the dumbass trifecta.
Oh, and putting an oversized chunk of drywall over the register thinking one nail will secure it doesn’t help either. In fact, mashing up a big piece of drywall against a smaller register opening is probably what knocked the wall plaster loose from around the vent in the first place. That’s not good.
Why? Because there is no insulation in the walls of this hundred year old white elephant structure, that’s why. Cold air comes pouring through such openings. Normally, that cold air would sink into the northwest room of the basement as it had been for years. But last month I used spray foam to block those drafts. So instead of sinking down the cold air was diverted over to the bathtub pipes.
And I ended up with wet, numb toes.
Then the next evening, as I was on the computer about to blog about what had happened, I again heard knocking sounds, but this time from upstairs. And just as I was thinking, “It couldn’t be…” there came the sound of spraying water.
Once again my space heater was in the path of a deluge. I managed to pull it away literally seconds before water gushed down from the ceiling, and right beside my computer desk. So I ran and got a sheet of plastic to cover my printer and the rest of my computer equipment.
This was followed by more mopping upstairs, downstairs and in the basement. And more frozen toes. It turned out that the upstairs pipes where this geyser was coming from didn’t burst as much as the joints just popped apart. However, I didn’t have the pipes and joints necessary for the repairs. And because the ice covered roads were unsafe to drive on, all I could do was keep the main water valve turned off and let the water trickle out of the downstairs bathtub spigot until morning.
So early Christmas Eve morning, instead of getting ready to leave for Indiana, I drove to Menards and bought any conceivable half-inch copper joint, valve or soldering supplies I imagined possibly needing, even if I was sure I had enough at home. I didn’t want to have to stop in the middle of what I was doing because I ran out of flux.
I repaired four different pipes in the upstairs bathroom. It seems two others I hadn’t noticed had also burst. A shutoff valve had shot off the end of one. But only a little trickle of ice had formed on the ends of both pipes. I don’t understand why water didn’t came pouring out of those two. I’m just thankful it didn’t.
I’m also thankful the water didn’t have a chance to drench some questionably routed old wiring I’d discovered while mopping. In the past, I’ve considered just stripping the rooms down to their studs and doing things over from scratch. It will be messy and time consuming, but there will be walls coming down in this house. And, heck, if a developer does approach me in the future about purchasing my property, I’ll have already started some of his demolition work for him.
Afterwards, I ran a couple additional errands. Pouring rain and last minute Christmas shoppers are not a good mix. I got more foam covers to insulate the pipes.
The rest of the day I anticipated the sounds of spraying and dripping.
But nothing happened.
Christmas Day, I headed to Indiana, listening to a disappointing audio book. I don’t want to name the title, but it turned out to be one of those ya-ya sisterhood type stories involving a young, ambitious female attorney who had lost her sense of self, she-ness or whatever you lose when you’re wealthy and discover your fiance has been cheating on you. Yet lady lawyer had a grandma full of folksy wisdom that helped the lady lawyer rediscover herself and find true love. Yick. It’s not that it was chick lit. If a story is well told, I’m all for cheese and sap. But after a few chapters I was heckling the narration and snarking on the lady lawyer’s dialogue.
I stopped imagining my house not sustaining water damage long enough to enjoy the holiday. Improved weather and being in a warm, dry house helped. Mom and I watched the HGTV Christmas specials. I especially liked the one featuring department store windows.
The family get together the next day was good. I thought we were going to move the printing and embroidery machinery over to Mom’s business. That’s what she had said she wanted for Christmas, but the shop still needed cleaning up and she decided that could wait. What she wanted was everyone together under one roof. The only problem was that my brother had mistakenly thought we weren’t exchanging ornaments this year because several of us like myself were facing tighter budgets.
He confronted my mother about this miscommunication. It didn’t escalate into anything big. He just wanted Mom to know it hurt him not to be giving presents on Christmas when he could have. His voice cracked. He was really hurt. And Mom’s voice cracked saying she was upset that she had hurt his feelings.
For my WASP-y family, this was a major altercation. Feeling I had to difuse the situation, I tried joking with him. “Hey, don’t worry. You can always get me something for Valentines.” Yeah, that bombed, as you can expect. But, really, once he had almost sobbed, it was all out of his system and that was the end of it.
I suggested he and I could go over to the new shop and clean up the lumber and whatever else needed to be taken to the garage and put away. Doing that helped. He excelled at making sure everything was as cleaned, swept and put away as possible. Carrying things out to the garage wasn’t that bad. The weather was damp, but it was so warm, almost like Spring. In the end, the business was ready to be moved into.
I had to head back to Dayton later that night. Mom wished I could spend an extra day, but understood I had to make sure my house was okay. However, she wondered when she’d be able to get the Christmas tree taken down. Would I be able to come back in February? So I, she and my aunt managed to take down the tree and box all the ornaments and other Christmas decorations and put it all away in the garage in just an hour. Major accomplishment considering It took me over six hours to put up and decorate the tree a few weeks ago.
All the way home I imagined what water damage could be awaiting me. I tried listening to the audio book again, but could only tolerate a couple chapters.
But when I returned home all was calm. All was dry.
Over the last couple months, I’ve come across many cute Christmas decorations. And I’ve been somewhat good at resisting the siren song of ornaments.
