We returned the next day after the defeating discovery of the wet foundation to find that the floor had dried and it did not smell like death in the house anymore. GREAT NEWS. I mean, I thought it was great news. Until Joe began explaining to me that we had to find the source of the water. Was the roof somehow leaking? Had a water line burst? Was it a drain? How much damage was there? The plethora of questions being thrown at me had me channeling the yogi within--control your breath and you can control your mind.
If only we could control other things so easily.
The first bedroom shares a wall with the hall bathroom, so let us begin our journey there. Joe removed the tile in the shower to find.... more tile? He removed the rest of the tile so the room was just a drop in tub base, toilet, and vanity. No sign of water yet. So let's move on. He removed the toilet to find it was not connected to the drain! The toilet was only siliconed to the floor and hovering over the drain!
Where is the flange you normally see that connects the toilet to the drain?
This picture was taken a bit later but it was the toilet drain. You can see how rusted it is.
That must be the cause of the water damage...right?
I told you this was the House from Hell. You should know by now it is not going to be that simple.
Let's go ahead and remove the vanity. OH LOOK! The vanity also was not connected to the drain. Did the person that flipped this house have no glue? Come on! So far we have two fixtures in one room that are not connected to a drain. Surely, this must be the cause...
But just for grins let's remove the tub. It was old and we wanted a slightly smaller one that fit the room better anyway. As Joe picked up the tub, he found something very interesting.
You guessed it! The tub was ALSO not connected to a drain! But there is more!
Now, you may not be as plumbing savvy as my husband, but I am hoping that you can see that something is very odd here. This picture was taken immediately after the tub was removed. ONLY THE TUB. So, remember when I said it was not connected to the drain? It was because there was no drain.
This is tar, dumped under the tub, supposedly acting as a barrier to protect the foundation as the water sifts through the sand?!?!?
So we finally found it!!! All of our problems are solved, and the culprit HAD to be this...right?
Wrong.
At this point, Joe had seen enough to recognize that this room in particular had to be gutted down to the studs. He had to see every part of this room in order to be completely sure that there was nothing else that could go wrong. So he began tearing down the plaster.
If you have never torn down 75 year old plaster before, it is a great time. You should definitely try it.
As he is pulling down plaster from the outside wall and begins to pull it down from the interior walls, he noticed that it is no longer just plaster, but a layer of drywall on top of the plaster (because it was not fun enough before). When he removed the layer of drywall from the ceiling in the hall bathroom, he found a surprise!
If you take a gander at the left side of the image about mid-way down, you'll see a round hole cut. This was beneath the drywall, tied into the plaster. It is an old exhaust fan that was covered. Okay, no big deal, until Joe touched it to remove and realized it was still actively wired up and HOT!
Well, isn't this just a fun day of demo? Glad that's over...
Just kidding! We still haven't actually found the hidden source of the water damage!!
As Joe peeled back those layers, just like an onion, he found so many things that were terrifyingly wrong. The electrical was awful (see above)--it had been spliced into so many times that there were burn marks all over the walls from arcs. There was mold on the plaster that was covered by drywall. The plumbing obviously had to be fixed as well, but from this one room we began to feel the gravity of the situation we had just entered into. If this ONE room is showing us this many safety/health hazards, what will the rest of the house be hiding?
The last piece of plaster to be removed was in the corner of the room, near the electrical panel (on the other side of the wall), and in this cavity held the vent pipe that goes from the sink drain to the roof. A vent pipe is required so that any off-gases from the sewer or septic system does not entire back into the home.
Guess what we found.
This image might look familiar to you. This is what started it all. Honestly, I'm thankful that this pipe was severely cracked and dumping water into the foundation. Without this crack, we would have taken a long time to start peeling back these layers, and I firmly believe we would have either gotten really sick from the mold throughout the home or burnt up in an electrical fire. As we progress throughout the demo rooms, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.
So we officially found the source of our original problem! In doing so, we found 87 other problems, however. I guess this project is going to take us longer than expected. Maybe I should extend our stay in that itty bitty AirBnB...
We can only hope that this is the worst room in the house--it has to get better from here.
If that were the case it would not be the House from Hell.
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