Oh.. The Joys of Owning a Home

So our main phone line quit working and we called the phone company to figure out why. The phone lines in the back of the house were fine, which meant they would have to go under the house to figure it out. Turns out that they wouldn't go under, as there was a huge puddle of water underneath our house. After they left, I took a look and we literally had water that was crawling.. and flies were flying everywhere... Heebie Jeebies.....

Funny thing is.. Matt and I could smell something funky, but Brian stayed here for two days and mentioned that we probably just needed to clean out the line to the disposal. Which of course I kept putting off... cause I am over working on this house.

So we then called a plumber who went under the house. We turned on the sink faucet, then the washer and then the dishwasher and no leak. Then we turned on the disposal with the sink faucet and the poor plumber got a mouthful and face full of water all over his face. Turns out we have had a leak inside our kitchen wall going on for months. He measured underneath and then above where the leak was coming from, tore out the drywall in our hallway (Picture #1 & #3) and found that an old air pipe had not been capped off properly, and all the water from our kitchen sink (whenever we used the disposal) was flowing up and out of the pipe, and flowing underneath the house. 

Hence we had mold growing inside our walls for months. We looked behind the oven and behind one of the kitchen counters and it had infested the kitchen side as well. Of course the insurance company came out to take a look and they won't cover it... What the hell good is insurance for? Their claim was that it has been an ongoing problem and we should have known about it... Well how the hell would we have known about it, as there was no mold growing on the outside of the hall wall, and we can't see behind the kitchen cabinets!!!!!!!  IDIOTS... Hence we are changing companies and now know to look for the exclusions on the policy. So note to all of you.. Pull out your policies and check them out for the exclusions... We really need to get earthquake coverage as well... or just start a fire if an earthquake hits and the house falls off the foundation.. LOL.

Well luckily, the plumber we used is a plumber that Matt has used quite a few times in the past with his real estate clients, so he is just going to charge us for parts/supplies. He can even get us granite countertops at cost ($350 for the whole countertop) verses thousands, so we might do that as well. He said that whatever we can do ourselves will even make it cheaper for us.. So today, I unscrewed part of the countertop so that I could take out the one countertop that for sure had mold behind it. Then cut out the drywall. I could also install the drywall myself, but I am just done with all this home repair. If we decide to do the granite countertop, then I have to take off all the countertops and sink myself and they will reinstall the granite counter and reinstall the cabinet that I took out with a new back.

Another good note about all of this, is we have had mice coming into the house from underneath the crawl space during the winter months thru the holes in the 2x4's.. this will give us a chance to plug those up and hopefully stop those little critters from coming in and running around our house.. Emily actually caught one a few years ago.... so disgusting. 

What really stinks is that once the drywall is replaced in the hallway, I have to repaint it. Usually no big deal. But of course we painted with Ralph Lauren paint (special texture/special paint) which if you paint one section you have to repaint the entire wall; which wouldn't be bad, but that wall leads up the stairway to the entire Master Bedroom and it just won't mesh together correctly.. Note to everyone.. just use regular paint and add a little bit of sand to it if you want texture of any kind. So guess we are changing the color or the hallway/bedroom... UGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

I guess I am just glad that this wasn't a leak from the second story... otherwise this mold issue would be a much bigger problem.

First found mold in the hallway leading upstairs.

Mold found behind the oven

First look at the hallway wall

Mold behind the kitchen cabinet after I removed it today.

Mold on the back of the kitchen cabinet after I removed it.