Seriously?!

Sigh.  Remember my pristine, newly renovated bathroom?  I remember it fondly, as well.  Sunday morning I went into that bathroom and noticed that the ceiling was collapsing above the tub/shower.  Turns out, we had another water leak -- this time in a pipe in the ceiling.  For those of you who are counting, that's three water leaks in the less than three years that we've lived in this house.
Certainly, there are worse things in the world than a house with crappy plumbing, but I have to admit that I am frustrated.  We are trying to decide whether to re-do the plumbing in the entire house (!), or just fix the damage from this most recent problem and wait for the other shoe to drop (i.e., the next water leak) down the road.....
I will keep you posted.  If we do decide to re-do all of the plumbing, that will mean lots of new sheetrock, and lots of painting -- so, the up side (if there is one) is that I'll get to pick some new paint colors!

Calamity

So, remember just a few days ago when I was making progress in my scrapbooking, and summer was humming along in a nice, unstructured way that I love so much?  Ah, the simpler days!

Here's what the last few days have brought at our house:

A leak in the wall between my laundry room and hall bathroom -- a leak that we didn't know existed -- warped the 50-year old original wood floors in my hallway and master bath, and caused so much damage that we had to gut the master bedroom, long hallway, hall bath, and laundry room down to the subfloor and the studs.

Then everything was sprayed with bleach, and the following day painted with Kilz.  (Sadly, I'm very familiar with this process, since our first house was completely destroyed by flood during tropical storm Allison, back in 2001.)  Here's what the destruction looks like after the Kilz:

You know what they say about best-laid plans and all of that.  Suddenly we are faced with rebuilding almost half of the house -- and we don't yet know if insurance will cover any of it.  Good times!

But the truth is, we've been through much worse!  This doesn't compare with spending the night in the attic, with an eleven-month old infant, as the flood waters rose around us.  Not even close!  After something like that, this just seems like an annoyance.  But still, I admit it is not how I planned to spend my summer, nor is it something we planned for financially.  But does anyone really plan for a calamity?

On the bright side ('cause there's gotta be one), I get a new laundry room and a new bathroom.  Here's what I'm dreaming of:

(Laundry room pics from Hardhat & Heels; bathroom designed by Nate Berkus -- I do love me some Nate!)

So a new journey begins, one filled with insurance adjusters, contractors, and tile selections. (The tile part may actually be fun.)  I'll keep you posted!