Having a Nicole Curtis Moment
Do you watch “Rehab Addict”? It’s a television show featuring Nicole Curtis who aims to restore, recycle and reuse when rehabbing houses instead of demolishing when possible. As a woman who likes to be a do-it-herselfer like Nicole, I thoroughly enjoy watching her show and having a hand at doing what I can myself too. Did you see the one recently where she had to rush home because her furnace broke, her pipes froze and burst putting water all over her house?
So when I learned how to de-winterized a home I was horrified when water started pooling out from under the walls in the dining room and out through a corner of a window. Everything was turned off at the walls so that I could systematically check each item. 
I thought about cracked pipes everywhere! The next day there were water marks in the dining room ceiling. I started thinking about the tub in the master bath above.
The point of this story is that I learned to trust my instincts, learned a bit more about plumbing and felt great when I found the problem.
I brought in a few licensed plumbers to bid on the project, which is what we should all always do. At $200/hour minimum they all wanted to start right away cutting exploratory holes in the drywall to find the leak(s), and then give me a bid after they knew what they were up against. I had seen something like water everywhere in that Rehab Addict episode. I understood why they needed to explore, but I couldn’t see the point of paying a highly trained, qualified and specialized person to put holes in the walls. Some thought it was the upstairs sinks, some thought there could be lots of broken pipes everywhere. I’m glad I interviewed many subs to find a good fit, and justify my initial inclination to cut holes in the drywall myself.
So I started cutting where I thought the pipes might be, then I moved closer to where the plumbers had thought it was. I made rectangular holes so the drywaller would have an easier time patching later. I turned the water back on and off quickly and went and stuck my head into the ceiling and listened. I only heard one source of water and made my next cut there. Cutting through wet drywall is is like slicing warm butter.
(dripping water video)There above me was the subfloor of the bathroom upstairs with a big cutout where, like a mini waterfall, water was rolling off and onto the drywall of the dining room ceiling below. Now I understood why some plumbers had thought it was over by the outside wall with the sinks, but also how I was right that it was the tub above with water traveling and running like a river. I put my cell phone up into the hole with the video and light going then reviewed the results. I could see the drips sparkling as they dropped from a pipe off the tub. I knew I should have cut by the tub first! Now I was going to have to patch four holes instead of just one in the closet upstairs. Trust your instincts!
And just like that I cut a hole in the closet next to the tub’s faucets and I could see where the cold water faucet’s fitting had burst clean off the cold water supply line. A disconnected pipe streams a lot of water! I turned on the kitchen sink downstairs to drain the lines and take the pressure out of the line upstairs. Now we’re dealing with a unique fitting that we can’t find anywhere, so we capped off the pipe for now.
I’m definitely going to change out the faucets later, and might even rearrange the bathroom layout, so capping the pipe at $2.50 was much less expensive than having a plumber do all that for $200+. Yes, I wasted my time which is better spent on other things, but I learned a lot about plumbing that I will never forget.
