Dirty Little Secret

I have something to confess... we have a shower leak.. and we were still using the shower...until last week when the leak finally broke through the ceiling and a stream of water poured through.

the water stained ceiling

So Adam and I started by moving the TV and taking down the shelving in order to open the ceiling.

With Grover looking on as the foreman

Once everything was cleared out, we Adam was able to take down the ceiling drywall- that was only held up by 4 nails... oh lordy...

Then it was time to run water in the shower to figure out where the leak was. I was afraid it was coming from a hole in the pipe and that it would be an expensive fix.

So I turned on the shower and we waited... and waited... and waited...

See, the reason we hadn't addressed the leak up until this point is that there was no water coming through the ceiling, and the water stain hadn't really grown. So Adam stayed downstairs, I was upstairs in the bedroom by the access panel, and I finally saw water.

Very slowly, drop by drop, water was coming from the center pipe behind the shower.

After we turned off the water, and went to look and see where it might be coming from, I found what was possibly the source of the leak, the tub faucet- which had no caulking around it (it must have come off?) and there was a gap between that and the tile.

Adam stood behind it at the access panel and I got to wiping it down with some bleach solution. As I pushed the sponge around faucet Adam could see the bleach bubbles dripping down the pipe.

You have no idea how relieved I was to find that this would be the source of the problem. Since we already have some clear silicone to caulk around the faucet, this is a free fix. No expensive plumber needed. We will have to replace the drywall from the ceiling (there was some mold obviously) but that is something we would have had to do anyway.

So now we wait for the shower to dry out, then Adam will caulk it with the silicone, then we can test it again to make sure no more water is coming through.