leaky plumbing? no problem

 We haven't been in our new house very long, but it didn't take long to notice that there were some pretty extreme plumbing issues going on, the worst problem being the bathroom in our room. The back of our house and the living room share walls with this bathroom, and we noticed that those walls were getting wet, then staying wet, then the paint and plaster crumbling to the floor. The landlord handed the plumbing issues back to us, which is fine, we just wanted to get started on the project asap. The pipes in this particular room are in the wall, which meant that those repairing the water leaks had to take a hammer to the wall and begin taking the wall down in the right place. This can be a bit tricky. This bathroom had 2 major leaks, one behind the sink (below) and one behind the toilet, so pretty soon, we had 2 large holes in the walls. This picture shows the blue piping in the wall behind the sink.

The walls are made of brick, and then covered in plaster, so knocking out a portion of wall is a big project. It can also be just the tiniest bit depressing in between.

 This picture shows the wall after the pipes were replaced, bricks back in place, and cement filling up the holes. I went out and bought some nice new tile that almost matched the existing tile on the walls and floor.

This is our living room wall, which the landlord painted a nice, yellow color for us before we moved in. I took this picture to show how the process goes when looking for a leak. 

I could tell this part of the process was starting to get to me as I'd look at this part of the wall each day and wonder how much was going to get ripped up, how many holes would be drilled, and how big the hole was going to get. It got finished though, so how it looked in the middle of the process doesn't really matter much. :)

The biggest hole was the back of our house, and that huge hole was there almost a week. To sleep at night without worrying about snake entry (snakes of course didn't even cross Nathan's mind, this is just my own personal worry), we blocked the hole into our bedroom at night. This picture shows the pile of wall that was knocked out on the back side of our house.

Once the pipes were replaced and the leaks repaired, the walls were patched up with cement. 

Here's a close up of the cement. The patch job here took a toll on my emotional well being, but thankfully Nathan got home and fixed it up a bit before it was too late. After watching the plumbing repair process for 7 days, I almost feel like I could take a stab at it myself next time. But let's just say I'm extremely thankful for the work that others did to give us the bathroom back again and extremely thankful that I didn't have to do it. One of these days, we'll get started on the other plumbing issues here, but for now, I'm taking a Merry Christmas break from the plumbing! And counting my blessings. :)