Dare I say that we have tackled the last few leaks in this house — The House Of 1,000 Leaks?

Since we bought the place last year we have been randomly discovering leaks in the plumbing, and repairing them as they turn up.   It started with a dripping garden hose faucet outside, and the hot water line for the washing machine.   Then we started to see leaks everywhere: the shutoff for the toilet didn’t quite shut off; the toilet ran until you jiggled the handle; another outside faucet began to drip, then another.

We eventually replaced every bit of plumbing in the house except for the lines themselves.   This included all four outside faucets, three sink faucets and associated shutoffs, laundry connections, two toilet shutoffs, both toilets, ice maker shutoff, and even the shutoff to the house itself (which didn’t shut off).   For a while we were complacent in our water-thriftiness, until a couple of weeks ago.

Then I noticed the thin wet line below the tub faucet in Emma’s bathroom.   The thin wet line never stopped, even when the shower taps were closed for days …

And then I noticed the little puddle on the floor, that seemed to arise from the tile grout itself, like a natural spring, after a shower in the hall bathroom …

We had forgotten about the shower taps.   Like every other water fixture in the house, they were 37 years old.   The washers were long since worn out, and they were leaking water, possibly inside the walls.   This gave me visions of black mold and rotted wood.   Who knew what evils lurked in the dark, behind the tile?

This was a tough call.   A peek inside the wall would be expensive, and we’d undoubtedly break the tiles.   Since they are impossible to match with modern tiles, we’d have to come up with a complementary tile to replace them.

We decided that if were going to sleep well at night, and leave this house alone for months at a time, we needed to do some exploratory surgery. After some planning, we arranged to have the showers gently dissected, saving as many of the original tiles as possible. Eleanor found a nice glass tile that will go well with the originals and placed an order for them.

Today was surgery day.   Contractor Chris came over and took things apart. He confirmed that the taps were leaking — badly — but that no damage had been done behind the walls.   The water was dripping onto a hidden edge of the tub and thus never reached the wood studs in the wall.   In the hall bath he replaced the ancient three-knob system with a modern self-balancing shower control and put everything back together.   Next week, when the tile order comes in, he’ll finish the job.

In Emma’s bath, things are much worse.   That shower has been heavily used over the past decades, and it really could use a complete rebuilding.   We had Chris remove the old leaking taps, seal up the plumbing, and just leave the wall open.   We’re going to ignore this bath until we get back in the fall, figuring that we can take all summer to decide what we want to do about it.

For now, ours will be a 1.5 bath house.   Being just the three of us, we don’t really need two full baths anyway, and since we’ve lived in an Airstream for over two years with only one very small bathroom, even having an extra half-bath represents complete luxury bordering on decadence.   Our expectations of a house have been re-defined by our travel experience: if it doesn’t leak and we have one good bathroom, we’re happy.