We’ve been living in our house for about 4 years now. Occasionally, we discover creative ways the former owners dealt with household projects. (Need to hold the curtains back from the windows? Thumbtacks work great! Want to watch tv in the bedroom? Put in on a dangerously tilting shelf that’s bracketed to the drywall–who needs a stud?)
But today’s discovery may be the very best; we have a leak in the ceiling of my husband’s office, located directly under the tub in the main bathroom. He called in the plumber, who opened up part of the ceiling to discover a corroding pipe, with 2 holes–one the size of a dime, the other the size of a nickel–and a wooden bowl that the former owners kindly placed under the pipe to catch the drips. Apparently, this was a fabulous idea–after all, we’ve lived there all this time with nary a clue. But now that the pipe has corroded away, the bowl just ain’t cuttin’ it.
Our plumber suggested we send the bowl back to the previous owners with a note that we don’t need it anymore. Makes me wonder what else the walls (and ceilings, and floors) are hiding.
We moved into our home in the dead of January. By July, the basement reeked – not like sewage, but like a dead body hidden under the foundation. Supposedly, the couple that had lived there had divorced and moved away, but we were making some wild fantasies about what the guy had done to his wife. Then we found out that the pipe from the kitchen sink simply emptied into the crawlspace… along with all the stuff we’d washed down the sink, putrifying down there. Ick.
Did you have a home inspection before you purchased? Not that I can imagine a home inspector would be curious as to where a sink drained, but still…didn’t anyone visit the crawlspace?
Oh my. And I thought our wooden bowl was high tech.
schnuckiputzi, that’s really gross. We don’t have anything close to that–shortly after we moved in we had to call Roto Rooter to clear the drain in the sink in the basement. They estimated there was at least 2 decades of clothing lint blocking the pipe to the sewer, which would explain why every time we ran the washer, the sink overflowed and flooded the entire basement–and why the old owners kept that toilet plunger so close by.