You might think that everything is rainbows and unicorns at my house. After all, I’m a home improvement expert. What could go wrong?
Answer: the exact same things that go wrong without warning at your home.
Several nights ago, a disaster unfolded in my home in the middle of the night. It actually started hours before, but my wife didn’t alert me to a tiny clue she had felt earlier in the day. As it turns out, a mouse gnawed at a plastic PEX water line that was running from the basement up to a second-floor bathroom. The pipe passed through an oversized hole created by the plumber more than 20 years ago. Had the plumber installed caulk to fill the hole, I’d not be typing this.
As I often remind readers, I didn’t build the house I currently live in. Had I done so, I can assure you no mice would be inside, and even if they did somehow sneak in through an open garage door, they’d not be able to travel through the walls and ceilings at will as they currently do. The builder of my home was a dunce. I was only supposed to live in this transitional house for two years, but now I’m going on year 14. That’s a story for another column.
The mischievous rodent ended up nibbling through the plastic pipe just enough to create a silent leak that reacted to gravity. Water soon ponded under the hardwood floor in our bedroom, causing it to swell. My lovely wife felt a new bump in the floor as she walked on the oriental rug that covers the floor but didn’t think too much about it.
Hours later, in the middle of the night, I had a nature call to the bathroom and felt a much larger hump in the floor that had never been there before. But in my sleep-walking state, I noticed it but crawled back under the covers thinking I’d inspect later to see what toy the cats might have shoved under the edge of the carpet. When I woke up at dawn, I immediately saw we had a serious problem. By then, the water had traveled to a basement bedroom, ruining the ceiling and laminate floor down there.
