Well, I spoke too soon. Apparently, our plumbing issues were not fixed (at no fault of Andy’s).

Friday morning, when I was in the bathroom getting ready for work, I noticed that the carpeted floor was slightly damp near the shower. Since neither of us had showered that morning yet, this did not make sense. I knelt down, moved the cat food bin and trash can out of the way, and felt the floor below the sink. Wet. The wood frame of our bathroom cabinet was swollen and wet. Like wet, wet. Son of a biscuit.

Andy was still asleep so I opened the bedroom door and called to him that I had some bad news. He groggily crawled out of bed, swore a little, and came to check it out.

When he had fixed our plumbing issues from the other day, we assumed that the manufacturers of the RV were smart – that they wouldn’t put connections where they could not be accessed. Judging from the water we were encountering, we were wrong about them.

Andy started by ripping up the shelving underneath the bathroom sink to see if there was a connection we had missed under the wood paneling. Nope. No such luck.

Then he took off the panel that held the shower controls.

About a foot down from that small opening, he could see a connection. And he could see that it was actively leaking. Unfortunately for us, the hosing was too tight to be able to pull out enough slack to fix the connection issue.

Maybe it was a lack of coffee, maybe frustration, maybe a little bit of both, but we decided to just bust through our bedroom wall to access the area behind the shower.

And I guess it was a good thing we did because we found out that there are two unnecessary connections behind the shower. They could have run the pipes straight from the main unit, but no, they didn’t do that. They put in these random connections that have no purpose other than to make it another possible leaking point.

On the bright side, with the giant hole in our wall Andy has easy access to everything he needs to replace!

We put fans blowing on the wet areas of the bathroom and I just hope that too much damage has not been caused.

The subfloor is wet and there is some damage to the bottom of the bathroom cabinet. So far, I haven’t felt any soft spots in the flooring. Hopefully, we can get it to dry enough that we don’t have mold.

I was thinking about this the other day, thinking about why we seem to encounter so many issues with the things that we own. Why we constantly seem to be amidst some project or another. First with our home and then with our RV – not to mention vehicle issues in between all that. I realized that it is because we buy old stuff. It’s that simple (it’s also what we can afford). Our house was built in 1897 so it makes sense that it needed the love and attention that we gave it. (Writing this made me realize that our house will be 120 this year! I hope the new owners throw it a party.)

Our motorhome is a ’97. And as much as we would like to deny it, they were built as vacation vehicles, not necessarily for full time living. They need maintenance – just like everything else – to keep them functional. So the fact that we have had to replace our refrigerator, A/C unit, and a variety of other things makes sense. It just stinks that we are dealing with water issues. (And is it some sort of cosmic joke that this happened exactly one week after I wrote about how much I love water?)

Like everything else we have endured, we will make it through this, too. One way or another (and now the Blondie song is in my head).

Andy tore open the wall even more, to be able to replace the connections and run new lines to the shower. It looks like it had a small leak from the control panel as well because there are old water stains on the back of the shower.

He finished replacing everything last night and we have turned the water back on. So far, so good. Our house was trashed afterwards.

I played my part by being the “runner” and grabbing things as he needed them. Also, since apparently I’m awesome at it, I was in charge of re-caulking the shower around the control panels (so if that leaks again, it’s my fault).

We tried to assemble our house into a functional space again but we still have a hole in our bedroom wall. We have temporarily sealed it up by taping a sheet over it (so the cats don’t crawl back there). Once we have determined that nothing is leaking, we are going to buy new paneling to fix the wall. This time, we are going to make sure there is an access panel!

Ideally, we would have just rerun the lines without the connectors but because of the jumble of other pipes in the area, we would have had to replace a lot of stuff. Andy bought quality connectors (no more plastic junk) and feels confident that they will last.

Ah, the joys of homeownership! Please send us all your positive vibes and hope that we are done with this mess!