Our wine cellar... almost

So it all started with a whispery sound that we could hear in our kitchen and our bathroom. I thought it was the ice maker working over time, but alas no. Dan said it was a leak. Was it behind the tile wall in the bathtub? Was it behind the wall behind the refrigerator?

Well to figure it out I had the bright idea that Dan should cut a hole in the bathroom wall to check for wet to narrow it down. Well we didn't have a wall leak, until Dan cut though the pipe. The plumber that came to fix that said it was a leak under the foundation. Alas, alack.

So enter plumber # 2 and his jack hammer...

Before he jackhammered he wandered around with a stethescope like thing that had long tubes from his ears to the floor and copper disks to hear through the floor. Thanks to our slab foundation with screed boards (2 X 4's to elevate the wood floor to level the floor and create sound insulation). Well, they also create an air pocket so the plumber couldn't pinpoint sounds under the floor. Holes were drilled, air was forced through the pipes, more holes were drilled until it was determined the leak was in the kitchen. The plumber kindly started under our refrigerator so the damage would be easily hidden. Thus hole #1. Well that's not where the leak was. He tried to tunnel to the leak, but the sewer line stopped that plan of action. Thus hole #2. Right in the middle of our kitchen. Ug!

Those are bags of dirt! So with two giant holes into our foundation and beyond there were several jokes made about what we could do. Bury treasure (or a body... not a good week to upset Dan!), create a wine cellar, make a trap door and a floor safe... but we decided to just repair it. We're boring. We didn't even put a time capsule or treasure in. 

That's our refrigerator in the middle of the house. An interesting layout, but glad it didn't last.

A resigned hubby with his new found kitchen holes. The plumber was not supposed to leave the holes, but since we were kind of out of money for this particular repair he agreed to let Dan back fill them. Lea and I helped with shovel and buckets one day carrying dirt in from the front yard (those bags of dirt was not ALL the dirt!). So we filled the holes with dirt. Dan and Grandpa Dan poured concrete and began to repair. Below you can see the 2X4s or screed  boards in the back hole and the plywood floor in the front hole.

There are so many layers to our kitchen floor that Dan had to find linoleum tiles to even out the flooring before replacing the laminate wood flooring. He got the cheapest he could find at Habitat Home Supply store. Glad that wasn't our final design choice!

He finished the front hole before the refrigerator hole. But once he had all the parts they went together pretty quick. Kind of a layer a day.

And finally replacing the floor boards. He had some from when he finished the front room (removing the carpet left some odd plaster transition between the kitchen and the front room - just plaster poured and shaped in a ramp under the ugly carpet). So not an exact match for the 20 year old laminate flooring, but pretty darn good.

Now they're all replaced and our fridge is back where it goes. Although after two weeks of having it in the middle of the house, I occasionally head the wrong way for some ingredient or other.

A huge chunk of change later and have we marked anything off our home improvement to-do list? No. We're just back where we started. But at least we're no longer creating a giant sink hole under the house. Literally a money pit.