Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

Thanksgiving has come and is long gone and only now have I had a chance to sit and contemplate....

The Wednesday before T-day, I woke up, earlier than my normal 5:30, at about 4:20 am.  I could hear water being slurped at the cats water fountain and was considering throttling whoever it was that was so thirsty.  I turned over, grumbled into my pillow, and tried to go back to sleep.  But the slurping sound continued.

And continued...

And...  argh!  At this point, I'm willing to sell state secrets if only it will stop!  The Chinese water torture works on me, just FYI.  And now I have to go wee!  Sigh..

So I got out of bed and walked into the bathroom.  I figured I'd refill the fountain (because generally that sound gets worse the lower the water level) while I was in there.  One step into the room (fine), second step into the room (squish).  Ugh, did someone hurl on my bathroom floor?  I mean, points for Gryffindor for hoarking on the linolium, but yuck...

So I turned on the light and looked down.  No hoark on the floor.  Just water.  My brain slowly percolates...  the water fountain doesn't hold THAT much water and it's 10 feet away!  How did this water get here?  DRIP!  The light bulb in my head comes on as my head receives a drop of water on it.

Yep, there's a leak in my bathroom ceiling.  In fact, it looks like a boob on my ceiling... a B-cup maybe.  Of course, my mind immediately leaps to the hot water heater in the utility closet upstairs so after first putting a bowl under the drip to catch future H2O, I trotted upstairs to confirm the worst.  But no.  The floor upstairs was a dry as a bone and the utility closet was warm and dry as well.  Hmmm...  With my limited construction experience (i.e., none), it occurs to me that there are probably pipes leading from the hot water heater to the bathrooms below, and I'm guessing one of them has sprung a leak.

All of this probably took 5 minutes, during which I managed to wake Mom up.  After explaining what was going on, and assuring her the bowl was in place, I took my blankie, pillow, and cat posse to my lazy-boy and tried to go back to sleep.

After a barely successful attempt at more sleep, I got up and started working out a plan of attack.  First, obviously, I'd be staying home that day... and depending on whether or not we could find a plumber who would come on the day before a long holiday weekend, our trip to Indy to have Thanksgiving with Haley's family was in flux.  Our former next door neighbor at the 'Do runs a plumbing business, so we called them and got the ol' "our schedule is full for the day, but we'll try to fit you in" routine.

Meanwhile, I'm envisioning that State Farm commercial where the person is asking his/her agent in a variety of situations whether they're covered, and one of them is a bathtub from the ceiling falling through to the floor below.  Not that there was that much water or a bathtub above it, but still... so I decided I would pop the B-cup and drain the water out, so as to lessen the possibility of something similar.  After poking the bubble, the water drained out and then it looked like a DD.

Of course, since I don't wait well, and I really wanted to see how far the wet went, I ripped the loose stuff off the ceiling to see how extensive the damage was.  The plumber was able to fit us in and the diagnosis was a pin-prick leak in one of the pipes.  So they cut a hole, replaced the leaky pipe and left.  We haven't received the bill yet, but we have our fingers crossed that we won't have to mortgage the 'Do.

Mostly because now we have a hole in my bathroom ceiling which will have to be fixed.  The funny thing is that just the day before, I had been thinking to myself that I'd like to paint my bathroom a pretty color instead of the beige that it and the rest of the condo is (with the exception of mine and mom's bedrooms).  I don't know if insurance would cover that, but a girl could hope, right?

 Of course, being a first-time homeowner, I don't know what insurance will cover or not.  And the final bill may come to $5 over our deductible!  I haven't had good luck with deductibles lately, but that's another story for later.

Can someone remind me why home-ownership is preferable to renting?