Rain, rain, go away!

We were feeling pretty confident last week when we heard about the upcoming weekend's forecast for rain. After all, this would be the first rainfall since we had our entire roof resealed, all of the windows installed, leaky plumbing and a backflow check valve repaired. We also had a termite treatment done last week, since our window installers found termites (just in case you didn't think we were having enough fun with home repair!). So the rains came and our main leak remained dry. We were thrilled at the thought of our house finally being leak free.

I started prepping our dinner. We had plans to see the BodyWorlds exhibit with Luke and Amanda; I was experimenting by making vegetarian sloppy joes, lentil soup, and a wheatberry and ricotta cheese dessert. Markus and I heard dripping in the kitchen...and we saw water dripping down from behind the trim on our BRAND NEW sliding door. We have so many water-damaged spots in this house already; we didn't want another so we took the trim off. This was a whole new leak for us to stress about. We put towels around and after a while, Markus went back up to study (yes, through all this, the poor guy is trying to study for a business continuity final exam!). An hour later he came down and suggested that perhaps our rain spout was clogged. Genius! I got a fiberglass pole that extends to paint in high places; he stuck it down the spout and felt an obstruction about halfway down. We couldn't get it loose, so in the pooring rain he grabbed a ladder and drill. I did an excellent job of watching while getting soaked (I call it moral support). He drilled a hole into the spout and some water started dripping out; I encouraged a few more drilled holes. Then it looked like a fountain, or like a baby peeing without its diaper on. Then, Markus used some kind of plier-like tool to cut the spout in between the drilled holes because there was still about 10 feet of trapped water. He was successful in opening the spout, and his reward was getting splattered with the black "stuff" you see all over him in this picture. It looked like a pipe burst when all the water ran out. Ms. Moral Support here, screamed when all the water burst out. Markus' face was covered in dirt - he wiped it off for the picture. After a few more minutes, he was able to retrieve the object that caused this obstruction. It was the tape measure he's holding in his hand. Two hours later, the leak was dry. Problem solved.

Then, we discovered that Camper has a bladder infection; with cats, you only discover this when they're peeing outside the litterbox. As if we hadn't cleaned enough on Saturday, right? Well, after an hour of trying to find a vet open on Sundays, then relenting and taking her to an animal hospital in Plymouth Meeting and spending 4 hours doing that, I come home and we discover some water in our entry area's closet. We find that a pipe under the shower in our bathroom is leaking!!! So, we ripped that apart and are using a different shower for now.

Now we're at Monday. I get ready to head to the airport, but I see that we have a bit of water leaking in the same spot over the sliding door. Make note to call roofer; rain spout wasn't the whole problem. I get to the airport and as I walk to my gate, they cancel the flight. I get rebooked on a later flight, which they cancel an hour later. They cancelled more Indy flights and were sold out on later ones that hadn't been cancelled, so I came back home. I'll fly out tomorrow. We're back to dreading any rainfall, and hoping that we'll find this last roof/siding leak. We're still trying to figure out what to do about our leaky shower; our best thought right now is not to use it!

On the upside, the windows look and work great and our top floor bathroom should be remodeled in the next few weeks. Let's hope the April showers end this week!