The Upside

Tyler came out of the basement bathroom a few days ago and said, "Mom, you need to come in here and look at this". I went in and what I saw was bulging paint and damp to the touch sheet rock on the ceiling directly above the toilet. Great! You don't have to be a plumber to figure out what bulging paint and damp sheet rock means. Especially when there's a bathroom directly above that one with a toilet in the exact same place. The toilet above was leaking.

Ryan cut a small hole into the ceiling in the basement. He couldn't see much and had to go a little bigger. Still couldn't see much and had to cut a little more. Then a little more. On about the fourth widening of the hole, pieces of wood started to fall out. My first thought was, "Holy crap! (censored) Is it rotting out the floor joists and sub-floor? How in the world is the whole bathroom up there not collapsing?". Ryan kept cutting and eventually took out the entire ceiling with pieces of wood falling the whole time. Pretty messy.

So, what did he find? Simply a leaking toilet. It had shifted, or not been put back on properly, or something, a few months ago. (Ryan took it off for reasons I can't remember anymore.) It was easy enough to go upstairs, remove the toilet, replace wax rings and other seals and stop the leak. Problem solved.

So, why was wood falling out of the ceiling down below? Well, it seems that a few years ago the old toilet had leaked and caused a lot of damage to the sub-floor, requiring it to be replaced. Some genius decided that it was easier to just let the rotted stuff fall and sit on the ceiling of the bathroom below rather than clean it up and throw it out. Lazy. We've discovered several "home improvement projects" around here that were done in the same manner. I kind of think that this house was previously occupied and remodeled by monkeys.

There is an upside to this situation, fortunately! We got the disgusting wood out of the ceiling. Definite plus. Ryan stayed home from work the next day (which means I got to spend time with him which is another plus) and replaced the ceiling properly. The other one was kind of saggy because it was held up with about 4 screws. Stupid monkeys! The sagging wasn't really visible to the naked eye and we never would have known how shoddy it was if the toilet hadn't leaked. The new one is held up nice and tight and the height raised quite a bit. Another plus. And since he was home, he was also able to finally fix the walls (to about 90% complete, need to paint a little more) I made him beat down to get my new couch into the family room. Another plus. I no longer feel guilt about destroying walls just for a couch, too. A plus for me! And finally, he brought me lunch after coming home from one of his 4 trips to Home Depot. Not having to make my lunch myself is a definite plus in my book.

*P.S. Another upside I've found! I had this scheduled to post the day that Blogger was down (last Friday),but it disappeared for a few days. I was pretty sure it had been munched and lost forever. (Sad, because there's like 2 people who read this blog and are so sad when I don't post. Haha, yeah right.) Fortunately, it appeared again as a draft on Wednesday! I know I'm the only one who cares, but that's okay. I'm happy!*