Laundry Leak

About a month ago, we discovered a very annoying problem in our house.... A leak. We'd had a soft spot of sorts in the drywall in the kitchen for a while, but it was getting worse. When we had a termite inspection done (because they'd been seen a lot around our neighborhood), the guy poked around a bit in that hole, found a pipe, and said we likely had a water leak.

So Justin cut a whole in the wall to check it out.

Sure enough, there was the drain pipe for our washing machine (Our laundry room is upstairs)

And once Justin pulled the stove away from the wall, we could peek behind the cabinets and see the water damage that had slowly been getting worse over the last 5 years since our house was built. Yuck.

We did some thinking, figuring, and Justin and my dad did some hunting in the neighborhood for a house under construction with our floor plan to get a feel for where the pipes were located amongst the framing. Then they measured, marked, and busted out a saw.

As you can see, they're not in the kitchen... The living room is on the other side of the wall from the kitchen and based on where they figured the leak was, it was easier to go in from the living room side than deal with working around the upper cabinets in the kitchen.

Sadly, the leak wasn't in the teeny spot they'd first thought it would be. So they ended up cutting out a piece of the wall about 6ft tall x 18in wide. My pictures are sparse considering the whole project, but they eventually had to pin up a sheet to protect the room from all the flying drywall dust blowing around. I can't believe I missed taking a picture of them once they came out from under that sheet... They looked like ghosts. My mom had to vacuum them off... ;)

They were finally able to find the source of the leak though! It appears that after the walls were all built, the cabinet people were hanging the cabinets in the kitchen. From the multiple holes in the drywall around the pipe, it looks like they were pounding around trying to find a stud to screw the cabinets into. They hit something solid, and drilled the cabinets into it... Our laundry drain pipe, NOT a stud! Another fun fact to add... All this work got started the evening before we were going to the hospital for Brigette to come.... What a mess!!!

Anyways, on Brigette's birthday, my dad stayed at our house, cut out the damaged section and replaced it with a new piece of pipe without holes ;) The funniest part though, was when my dad texted Justin (while I was in labor, remember?) and said he'd gotten the new pipe all in place, but when he went to put the particle board and drywall back in place, he held them up there, grabbed a nail and hammered... right into the new pipe!! Really?! It was hilarious and so unpredictable, we could only laugh.... So he had to start all over again....

Then we set out to find someone to help us patch the drywall and match the texture. We really didn't know where to start. So we asked friends on facebook. Lucky us, some friends in the ward had just learned how to do all of this as they were working on a project in their own house. The people who taught them said the only payment they needed was for these friends of ours to go help someone else. So in the last week, we've basically had daily visits from them as they fixed our wall for us!

Now we have to decide if we want to pay a professional to come paint that whole room (double tall ceilings) because I don't want to just patch up with the yucky off-white flat paint that the builders put on. Oh, and re-hang all those "ancestor wall" pictures... That'll be fun...

Anyways, I'm REALLY glad to have my laundry capabilities back! Between discovering the leak and finally getting it fixed, I had to do laundry twice at someone else's house, no fun! Thank goodness for modern conveniences!