The hits keep coming

You know, if I wasn’t living it I wouldn’t believe it. I honestly question if my coworkers believe it. I have some crap luck. I get the sense that if it weren’t for the photographic evidence of my horrible luck no one would believe me and frankly I wouldn’t blame them. Even with photos, I’m wondering if people are questioning, because how many times can something go wrong with one person?

My first home was probably the best case experience for an owner. I did regular maintenance on it, checked the AC, water heater, etc. Everything was good, the house treated me well, and that was the end of the story. By comparison this new (to me) home has been a pure nightmare. I’ve had half a dozen emergencies in the past year or so alone and today, or rather last night, I had another one added to the mix.

My toilet clogged for apparently no reason. After trying to fix it, I noticed water leaking around the base. For those who have never done home repair, there is a wax seal that connects the toilet to the drain. Think super mario brothers pipe, seriously that is what it looks like to me. Anyway, that was the first clue I had a real emergency on my hands, I’ve seen enough home improvement shows to know that poop water slowly seeping into the subfloor is bad news and can sometimes go undetected for years. I was hoping this leak was a catastrophic failure and not something long term.

So called a plumber, who was equally confused as to what the cause was. Ran a snake, nothing happened, so the whole toilet had to be pulled. It was going to need to be removed to replace the seal anyway so no harm there. I had asked the plumber if the wax seal might have broken off, fallen into the drain, and caused both the leak and the plug. He said it was unlikely, but lo and behold after removing the toilet there it was, half the wax seal had fallen in. He had never seen anything like it.

Long story short, I had water leaking for sure, so he fixed the toilet and this morning I had a water mitigation company do a free inspection to see just how much water escaped. Turns out quite a bit because last night I had a shock when I went to the garage, which is directly under the bathroom in question, to find that my car had gotten a shower. A poop water shower, but a shower nonetheless. So there was quite a bit of water that crossed through the flooring and came out the other side.

This may not sound like a bad thing, after all who wants the water sitting between the subfloor and garage ceiling? However, that is bad. It means the insulation is probably soaking in all that water and holding it like a sponge. The fact that it came out the other side suggests it was saturated enough for it to come out and to my horror it still drips even after the fix. It wasn’t even that much water, or at least I didn’t think it was.

The worst part about all of this is that not only do I need to pay the cost of the plumber, I now need to pay the cost of the water damage out of pocket. My insurance deductible is higher than the cost of the work that needs to be done, so with great pain, I’m left either living with it (nope) or paying the cost. As hinted, I opted to pay the cost for the repair instead of leaving it to probably make things worse.

Okay, just kidding that’s not even the worst of it. The worst of it is that after the company comes in, dries everything and puts down a mold inhibitor, which should take 3-5 days depending on how bad everything is, I will be left with a huge dry, non-insulated, hole in that portion of my garage. So I’ll either need to get the supplies and fix it myself (with what time, I don’t know), or hire someone to come out and do it for me.

I can’t find a post on it, but fun fact, this isn’t the first water damage I’ve had. In fact, my master bedroom closet has half the bottom drywall and insulation ripped out because I had water leaking from my bedroom door (which leads outside), which ran along the wall and started to pool in my closet. That was at least a year ago and I still haven’t had time and/or enough money to fix the issue. So this will probably push me into action and I’ll have to fix both the garage and bedroom myself. I’m not thrilled about it, but it’s not like I’m rich.

That’s actually why I have gotten so handy over the years. I’ve needed to fix just about everything that goes wrong from car to computer to home. You learn a lot, like it or not, and I wouldn’t mind it so much if I had the money to do it right and the time to spend on the project, but I have very little of either of those things. Which means relying once again on my credit cards to get through this mess and the meager savings I have set aside to do the home repairs that are still remaining (which are a lot!) and setting time aside to do the work myself, which will be hard, but not impossible I guess.

I’m happy I have a roof over my head and a steady place of my own where I have only minor worries about losing. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade it for the days where I was homeless or renting, but seriously, this house needs to get itself together and quit falling apart on me. I want to do all the things, I do, but damn it I don’t want to be forced into having to do all the things!

Anyway, hug your home or something. I don’t know, but as for me, I need to probably have the other toilet in the house looked at before that wax seal goes out or something crazy. Who knew?! The home isn’t even that old!