by Meds on Mon Jul 25, 2011 11:46 pm
So back on May 23rd we had a pipe break. Fixed it. On the 25th it broke further back.
Fuck.
Insurance sends a company over. Walls are wet. Carpet is toast. Mold behind another wall. Other little issues. Plumber shows up to patch pipe so we have water in the house for the interim. While he is there another pipe joint goes in the basement ceiling. No I'm not joking, the plumber found it when he went to turn the water back off after finding the original leak. So he fixes that and the other one. This is the 6th pipe break/leak since December 2009 and the second time insurance has dealt with it. Everyone has been wondering why. First we thought pressure because there was no reducer on the house (go figure). That wasn't it because we put one on and still had problems.
After pulling back the drywall and seeing all the pipes we have our answer! The morons who plumbed the house used a smattering of different ages of pipe and used 3/8" instead of 1/2". There is corroded spots everywhere. Instead of one water line through the house branching out into the places needed there are 3 separate runs that parrallel one another all over the place. We found a hot water line capped off in the middle of our bedroom ceiling.....there's nothing above there, the bathroom is 15 feet away in the corner! A cold water pipe into that upstairs bathroom goes 4 feet out into the ceiling and then curves back and goes 6 feet back and the up to the bathroom. The pipes int he basement are showing multiple signs of being ready to break in places. There were junction boxes and pot light casings shoved up under the basement ceiling with live lines running into them. When we peeled back some of the ceiling to check for that leak the plumber found a piece of baseboard trim fell out of the ceiling. WTF!?! Insulation haphazardly shoved in the ceiling where there was no need for it. Just brutal. SELL! SELL! SELL! Right? Wrong.
My wife bought the house a year before I met her, she's locked into the mortgage until 2014. If we do nothing to the house we have to declare all these problems when we do sell because we are aware of them. That of course says nothing about the money we'll spend just fixing damaged shit over the course of that time. So our only option? Yeah, you guessed it, we are replacing all the plumbing in our house with the exception of the main bathroom. We also have some serious electrical work to do in the basement.
Now for the best part. The restoration company that was sent by insurance has taken 9 weeks to do a 10 day job. First it was waiting for full approval from Wawanessa. But we've been told they don't ask for a second quote unless a job is more than $10K. This was quoted at just over $7K. Just massive delays. Finally I take Rats advice (thanks Ratman) and become the squeaky wheel. Done and done. They come and do the job.....NOT! They show up to do the floor, and then leave after 3 hours without a word. Floor unfinished. Comes back and leave again 2 days later. Floor? Almost done. Forgot about the closet. The shoddiest work ever on the stairs. I raise Cain.
Guys come and do baseboards, I'm assured the stairs will be fixed. They finish painting. All but the baseboard by the stairs is on. I go check it out later taht day. Baseboards are smeared by the colour from the wall, and not just in one or two little places.....EVERYWHERE! The tape is peeling below where they cut for an electrical outlet. The paint is peeling back next to the other one and the drywall is damaged enough that it wouldn't be hidden by the outlet cover. On a bulkhead above the window there are places where the drywall hasn't been properly secured and the edge of the drywall is pushing a definitive line through the paint. We were able to move our bed back into our room today though, so at least we aren't sleeping in the TV room in the basement. Good thing too, because after we moved the bed, there was mold growing through the carpet where the bed has sat for 9 weeks while we waited for these morons to finish a 10 day job. I wonder what assurances I'll get tomorrow.....
We have, however decided to push through this and forge ahead with a few other fixes since things are so dusty and dirty already anyhow. Our entryway is losing a closet, hardwood is becoming a tile of some sort, the basement is losing a pair of small rooms, getting new floor, new plumbing, some wiring, and new look. Our backdoor is changing from sliding to double garden (this means the deck disappears next year and becomes a patio), and a new front door will be going on. Nothing set entirely in stone yet, but now that we know that the walls we want to remove and modify are most likely not load-bearing, well we hope to begin in two weeks and have the main floor stuff finished by mid September and the basement gutted shortly thereafter, if not before.
I hate construction and reno's.
RSS Feed)
