This saga begins probably a year and a half ago, when my husband was lying on the couch in our basement, and felt a drip of water fall on his forehead. Above him, he spies a saggy wet spot in the ceiling drywall. He puts towels on the couch and the next day tears out the drywall. There is a pipe elbow with a discolored vertical pipe above it. Detective work reveals that the vertical pipe runs inside the wall dividing our kitchen from our dining room.
We call our plumber, who is reasonable, doesn’t smell bad, shows up on time, and at that point had been doing a good job for us. He says the vertical pipe is the drain from our master bathroom. He discovers that our toilet is GROUTED to the tile, which had been replaced by the prior homeowner, and suspects a bad wax seal. He chisels out the toilet, replaces the wax seal, and leaves the name and number of his drywall guy. We were in the depths of parenting an infant and didn’t do anything about the drywall, since after all it was in part of the house where visitors never go. Plus we wanted to be sure it was the toilet.
A few months later, my husband gets dripped on again. Same plumber comes out and now suspects a trim nail in the dining room wall. We remove all the trim from that wall and rip out more drywall. It’s not a trim nail, but there is a patched nail hole where the prior homeowner had hung a picture. DUDE, THE PIPE IS NOT A STUD!!! Plumber cuts out the section of pipe with the nail hole, but uses a huge coupling to fix it. Suggests we install a fake vent since our wall is super-narrow and there is no way we can drywall over his gigantic coupling. We are starting to get unhappy. Then he leaves a recommendation for his HVAC guy, since we were wanting to have our furnace and AC checked. Research on the HVAC company reveals the owner and his son and one other employee are convicted child molesters. Son and other employee violated parole to do work in the houses of clients. Sigh. Decide not to hire back this plumber.
Husband and his father decide to replace the huge coupling with two smaller ones that will fit inside the wall. We test the replacements for leaks and have called victory but still do not repair the drywall. Good thing, since a few months later… drip drip into the basement AGAIN. And no, it is not our coupling re-do, which we can easily inspect through the open wall. It’s something else.
We join Angie’s list and fully vet a new company on Yelp and Google and Better Business Bureau as well. New plumber comes out and give us a fair estimate to replace the whole damn pipe run. Fails to show up for his return appointment. Husband calls company, secretary says she will have the owner call us. Owner never calls. Secretary calls back a week later asking how we want to pay. Husband is livid, tells her we won’t pay for services never rendered, secretary promised to have owner call again. Owner never calls. Husband vows to learn how to do this himself.
(At this point, I am cheering! I wanted to tackle this ourselves as soon as the toilet “repair” failed, but Husband is more conservative about these things despite being quite handy.)
Yesterday we cut the pipe below the elbow, and released the couplings at the top of the pipe. We have an elbow and 8-10 feet of vertical pipe to replace. However, the pipe WILL NOT COME OUT! My husband was literally hanging all his body weight from the elbow, out of the basement ceiling. We tear out MORE drywall and look for anything holding the pipe in place. There is nothing. We theorize that something coming through the KITCHEN wall on the back side of the pipe must be holding it. We lever the pipe out of the dining room wall and discover all kinds of screws and trim nails coming in through the kitchen wall. It appears the builder ANCHORED OUR LOWER CABINET INTO THE PIPE. Argh. There were SEVEN holes in the pipe! Mold and old sewage everywhere (which we could smell, but never see). I’m glad to have had so much experience remediating mold after Hurricane Katrina, so I get to work while my husband grinds off the screws and starts gluing up new fittings (yes, I wore a mask and other protective gear). By 10:30 last night we had installed and tested the new pipe run.
We’re going to leave the drywall unpatched for a little while longer, but are temped to truly call it a victory this time. Because we did it our own damn selves.
