I have had this post sitting in “draft” mode for months now. I think because it was just kind of hard to write. It’s that moment of “what have we gotten ourselves into?!” and “this house is going to bleed us dry!” Brace yourself for a novel.
Let me back up a little.
We bought this house, that we deemed our “forever home”, back in April 2013. We loved it. We drove by it for two years while it was on the market telling each other how much we loved it. Seriously. We would purposefully drive out of our way to go down this street to just drive s l o w l y in front of this house. It was like we were casing it. But it was way out of our price range.
So we just kept watching it. And low and behold they started coming down in price. And our house at the time was going up in price. It became the perfect storm for us. We actually looked at it in early November of 2012, but still proceeded cautiously. We went and looked at other homes, just to be sure we weren’t somehow freakishly obsessed with the house, looked at this house several more times and didn’t even make an offer until January.
I wanted to give you all that background just to say, we don’t just jump into things! 😛
Then back in June 2015, we had foundation work done. A lot of foundation work. And we stayed in the house while it was done. You can read about it here.
After all that foundation work was done, we had to have two plumbing tests done. The first test involved the water coming into our house (hot/cold water lines.) The second test involved the water exiting our house (sewer lines.)
You see the foundation company couldn’t mudjack to fill in the void left from adding piers under the slab and lifting the house until all possible cracks/leaks were fixed, simply because if there is a significant crack, it would fill our sewer line with a concrete slurry. Ugh. Plus they won’t give you your lifetime warranty if all these steps weren’t completed. After spending that much cash on the foundation work, there was no way we were walking away from this without our warranty.
Well, we passed the first test, but the second test gave us problems. Our house was built in 1971, so it has cast iron sewer pipes running under our slab. Turns out they’re finding out cast iron has about a 40 year life (at least that’s what all the plumbers told us.)
We had different plumbers out here three different times checking and re-checking it between June and October. They determined we had a leak or a break somewhere in the middle of our house under the slab. It’s just hard to tell with cast iron, unless the pipe is crushed, which ours wasn’t. They did all agree that it seemed like the one side of our house (the long stretch from the master bath to the front of the house) seemed to be okay.
So, we had two options in front of us. And both of them made me want to cry big ugly tears.
- Plumber 1 wanted to go back down through the holes in our floor (that were already sealed up with concrete) and create about 3 new ones and replace just the stretch of plumbing across the middle of the house where they “thought” the leak was.
- Plumber 2 wanted to trench from the outside and create tunnels under our house and actually re-route the plumbing for our sewer to connect in the front yard.
We went with door number 2. It kept all the digging (read: nasty/disgusting used sewer pipes) OUTSIDE the house and allowed them to correct the “negative flow” that had developed over the years (where the plumbing isn’t at the right slope anymore to let everything in your sewer flow out from under your house — yeah, pretty important, and pretty gross if you think about it.) This also bypassed the weird connection that ran smack dab through the middle of our living room. Plumber 1 said the negative flow couldn’t be corrected. 😐
This was not the cheapest option. Kids, don’t let your parents tell you there’s no money in digging holes. Good heavens. The tunnels were the most expensive part of this whole endeavor. Like almost 90%!
So what do you do when this HUGE unexpected expense comes along? What you hate to do, but know is the only way to take care of things…a home improvement loan. So after applying and the loan being approved, we got started…like the day after it funded.
So on October 20, we (okay “they”) started digging the trenches. And our front yard started looking like a war zone. They said it should take about 3 days to dig the holes, about 2 days for the plumbers and another 3 or so days to back fill.
Want to see what the underside of a house looks like? I refused to crawl under there, but Rob was beyond curious. So here are a few shots from under the casa. If you look close you can see some of the piers from the foundation work. And a ginormous rock they had to dig around.
Kind of creepy if you ask me.
And this is where we also discovered that the drain pipe from the washer was completely disconnected from the rest of the sewer. So all the water from every load of laundry was being dumped right under our house. Who knows for how long. We don’t know if the break happened when they lifted the foundation or if the break caused the trouble with the foundation. (All the foundation work was on that side of the house.) At this point, it was a which came first, chicken-or-the-egg question. And if we filed with insurance, they would argue it was caused by the foundation work. And we couldn’t say for sure if it was or not. Just.not.worth.it.
Here’s where it gets really fun. After all the rain we had in the spring, it was dry for the longest time. Well, time was not on our side, as soon as they finished digging these big beautiful holes, it started raining. And you guessed it, filling every hole up with water.
I have no pictures of the tunnels full of water because we were too busy spending all our time pumping out the water. Literally, up to the slab full.
So, now the plumbers couldn’t work until it dried out.
And then we noticed one of the piers was sideways on the corner of the house where there was a tunnel full of water. So we had to make a call to the foundation company to make sure we were still okay. After several days, we got the green light, that everything was still okay and we could continue.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, they were able to get back to work. But then the plumbers found out that the pipe from the toilet in the laundry room that they were replacing ran right thru the structural concrete beam of our house. They also thought it had a crack in it. So, another call to the foundation company and structural engineer to see if we needed additional piers.
Turns out they were able to move a pier under the beam near it and we were able to move forward again. Except it started raining. Again. Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up!
Once it dried out enough for the plumbers to start back to work, they actually would have finished pretty quick, but then….
You guessed it. Another road block.
The pipe we thought was still okay (going back to the master bath) was so fragile and crumbly, every time they tried to tie onto it, it crumbled and split.
So now, it turns out we have to have that whole line replaced, too. The plumbers had to arrange for the tunneling company to come back out for another 60 feet (we had already had 55 feet with three tunnels) and two more holes. Almost doubled the cost.
At this point, all we could do was laugh. Really. Our house had become the Money Pit, not only financially, but it really looked like it. (If you haven’t seen the movie, you should go rent it now. Like right now.) And yes, we were laughing like Walter did when the bathtub fell through his floor.
And here’s ours to compare it to.
The only difference? Our toilets just weren’t laying on the front lawn. They were hanging out inside the house, sometimes connected, sometimes not. You know, we have our standards. 😛 (The plumbers tried to always leave us with one working sink and toilet.)
Finally, after all the new tunnels were dug and a few more go-arounds with the rain, the plumbers finished, we passed our city inspection and they were able to fill the tunnels back in.
That’s six weeks in a nutshell. And the total cost if you were wondering? Just a couple dollars shy of $30k.
So, lessons learned here. Breath deep. Come up with a game plan. And at the end of the day it’s just stuff.
Yes, stuff we’ll pay on for several years. Yes, stuff you can’t see when you look at our house. It is literally like we shoved a brand new car under the house…for no one to see or drive AND BONUS: Our house still looks worse than when we bought it. New flooring as a result of having earlier foundation work done, will have to wait. I tell my kids every time they flush the toilet “you hear that? that’s your college fund — work hard and get a scholarship!” lol!
Good news is, through it all we didn’t eat our young or kill each other.
We all get to live another day to find out what this Money Pit has in store for us next.
Stay tuned.
