Why yes, this -is- the right week to tear out all the plumbing...
Thursday morning we discovered serious water damage in our living room ceiling, directly below the upstairs bathroom. Annika called the insurance company and they had their emergency response crew out to assess the damage around 5 on the same day. They did an exploratory look around the damage area and brought in some serious dehumidifiers to dry out the wet portions of the house. The response crew then told us to get a plumber in, and the plumbing crew gave us the lowdown: All of the old, cast-iron plumbing between the fixtures in our upstairs bathroom out to the road has to go. The source of the leak was the soil stack itself, which has a half-inch hole rusted through it.
So, a week to the day before we were going to be hosting Thanksgiving Dinner for eight, we discover that we need to live in a hotel until they can gut out and replace 95% of the domestic service pipes in the house. This is the point where I start wondering things like, “gee, I wonder if we'll actually break even when we sell this nightmare”. The de-leading fiasco of '04 was far more extensive (and expensive), but at least there we could point to the lead-free certificates and tell prospective home buyers that their children wouldn't get lead poisoning in this house. One cannot, however, point to the bathroom and say “as an added bonus, we're selling you a working toilet!“.
Annika is much more optimistic about the place than I am. Sure, it is a lovely house. And, as she points out, things like water leaks can happen in any home. But other people don't seem to have to structurally reinforce their basements and attics, rewire their electricals, gut and rebuild their kitchens, scrub the lead out of all available surfaces, and tear out all of their old plumbing. I mean, to me it feels like a little much.
Meanwhile, we are staying at a nearby Marriott Residence Inn which has been fantastic. Seriously, any time we need to stay at a hotel with the kids, we will try to stay at one of these. The suite is small but thoughtfully laid out; there are two separate bedrooms, a tiny but serviceable kitchen, and a complimentary breakfast is served in the main building. The plumbers feel that they can have us up and running with new pipes by EOB on Wednesday. That means we can be back in our house for Thanksgiving though, for the sake of sanity, we may be postponing the feast by a day.