All from a little drip
Many years ago I found myself buying a fixer upper, with three kids, and very little experience in what it takes to keep up with the quirks of an old house. Before I moved in, I was working on scraping off popcorn ceilings, installing new floors (luckily I was able to hire out for this one), and painting pretty much every wall there was inside.
One morning after getting some beautiful new floors installed in the master bedroom, I walked in the room and immediately noticed a squishy feeling. The floor had give, it squelched, and moved slightly up and down as I stepped on it. I soon realized there was water underneath, and I went into full panic mode.
I racked my brain trying to figure out what was happening. I called the flooring company, asking if there was anyway they could have hit a pipe on install, or damaged the flooring underneath somehow, trying to manage to get words out while choking back sobs. They were very kind and even sent someone out to check even though they likely knew it had nothing to do with their work. I also managed to borrow an industrial fan from someone nearby to point at the baseboards to try and dry things up without knowing the cause.
Soon after I called a plumber who came and looked. He tested all along the wall, cutting out chunks of drywall to try and find the source. Maybe the water heater leaked, maybe there was a broken pipe under the subfloor…..
Sometime later, we figured out that the washer hose hookup cap wasn’t the right fit, and didn’t seal completely when on. There was a very small drip, that slowly traveled down the pipe inside the wall, and was collecting at the baseboards, and traveling under the floor. I watched how slow it dripped, trying to understand how something so small and barely noticeable could create so much havoc in just a short time. (Unfortunately this was the first of three incidents like this, another one happening a few years later when I discovered sprouts from my daughters carpet and realized an AC condenser got slightly knocked off balance and was dripping and building up under the carpet in her room.)
All that to say, don’t underestimate the power of a drip at a time. It can create havoc, but it can also heal it. As cheesy as it is, I’ve seen it work both ways. For a deep dive into how to use the drip theory (I’m coining it, hopefully it isn’t taken) visit this post. I’m glad you’re giving it a shot.
