The Mystery Leak

Water stains. Unwelcome visitors in any home. Especially ours.

A few months ago we noticed a couple small ones had appeared on our kitchen ceiling. This was during those months when Brad was barely home, and I know as much about plumbing as I do about ice fishing . . . enough to know I don't like it. So we decided to let it go and keep an eye on it. To my dismay, the water stains began to multiply in number and spread out more across the ceiling. Since the holidays were upon us, we again decided to keep an eye on it. We did take a look into the pipe closet behind the shower when we were in the middle of remodeling the kitchen, but were unable to find what we dubbed "the mystery leak." We attributed it to the kids wet bath toys being put away in the cupboard and dripping down, but that just didn't seem like it would create that big of a stain, if any. However, upon returning from our recent trip we were even more dismayed to find the many small water stains had begun to merge into a larger one and there were even some small, yet noticeable, cracks in the ceiling.

Yesterday we decided we had kept an eye on it long enough and cut out a piece of the ceiling to try and get to the bottom of the mystery leak.

After several hours of searching, we finally found it coming from where the pipe goes through the wall into the shower. We were fortunately able to create a temporary fix by redirecting the leak back into the tub (it only leaks when the shower is on) which saved us $150 for now. We plan to do the full repair when we gut and remodel the whole bathroom hopefully within the next year.

So we didn't get to grout the tile or finish the trim in the kitchen as planned. But in lieu of the water stains I have this really cool trapdoor-looking thing on my ceiling.

Hopefully the leak problem is resolved for awhile and it will look like a normal ceiling again . . . soon.

P.S. To my loyal friends who participated in Friday Funny Pages yesterday without me...you guys are the best and my sincerest apologies for not posting this week. This whole leak business kept me pretty occupied but I will be back on track next week!

P.P.S. Special thanks to my mother-in-law for the use of their digital camera so we can continue to take massive amounts of photos of our most favorite people as much as we want! :)