Or… Fight Water with Fire
About a month ago we noticed that our master bathroom shower was leaking down into the basement. Confronting this semi-major catastrophe head on (as is our way), we strategically placed paper cups on the floor downstairs to catch the drips.
Surprisingly, this wasn’t a permanent solution. Our kids kept knocking the cups over “accidentally.” So, we did the next most logical thing: we tore out our fireplace.
Believe it or not, this made perfect sense. I kid you not.
Back 12 years ago, when we first moved into our house, the master bathroom shower used to leak. We had the builder’s plumber and tile guy both come back many times to try and fix that leak. They never could, mostly because they never did anything more than look at it.
The tile guy would blame the plumber.
The plumber would blame the tile guy.
And the leak continued.
Finally, we convinced the builder that in order to stop the leak, something would actually have to be done. The tile guy came and tore out the tile and discovered a rip in the vinyl liner they misleadingly call a “shower pan.” He glued (yes, glued!) it back together and then re-tiled the shower. Naturally, this didn’t work.
Shocking.
In desperation, and at our own expense, we completely re-did the shower. With competent subcontractors. (That’s important.) And we haven’t had any problems for about 7, 8, or (has it been?) 9 years.
Until our shower started leaking.
Again.
This time, the shower was leaking from the pipe that went up to the shower head, and not from the shower pan. In order to fix it, we were going to have to rip out the shower.
Again.
Our fireplace backs up to the shower. We’ve talked about replacing our energy inefficient gas logs with a gas fireplace insert for years (don’t ask how many), but we haven’t wanted to spend the money. But faced with the prospect of re-re-doing an already re-done shower or re-doing something we’ve wanted to do anyway, well, we went with the fireplace.
By pulling out our old fireplace and gas logs, we were able to get to the shower pipes. Our competent plumber returned, and now our leak and the paper cups in the basement are gone.
And we have a pretty, energy efficient gas fireplace. Just in time for the really cold summer weather.
We still have to replace the cement board around the fireplace and re-tile (something I’ve also wanted to do for years) and that will hopefully be the end of the continuing saga of the leaking shower.
For our next home improvement project, we plan on replacing our two French doors with a sliding glass one because the wand that opens and closes the blinds on the family room window is broken.
Don’t ask. You really don’t want to know.
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I have the exact same problem only in reverse. We want to replace the sliding glass door into the backyard with French doors because one of the slats has broken on the vertical blinds. So funny how that all works out in the end.
Congrats on fixing the leak!
My leaking shower still leaks even with your advice, so thanks for nothing. Well at least it was funny.
Always glad to help
(Did you try the paper cups?)