Hiding things in the walls, part 3

I'm hiding treasures in the walls again. It's like the funnest thing I can think of.

Our basement stairwell had been open and wall-less for many months now, after our leaky pipe plumbing problem. It was old splintery wood and kind of crusty, to say the least. The plumbing was replaced in December, and, lucky for us, the mold/mildew was only on the plaster and lathe, which has been long gone. Safe to say everything had plenty of time to dry out over the past few months. Time to close things up!

But before my dad hung the drywall, we slipped a collection of artifacts inside for future residents of this house to find (if they destroy the walls). An informal kind of time capsule.

Anticipating this hiding, Elise and I created a commemorative painting a few months ago when 2014 was still fresh and new (to let you in on just how slow we are moving around here).

The rest of our package was pretty impromptu and included some more pre-school art, a few 2014 coins, a copy of our community newspaper, and a random assortment of plastic toys we didn't mind parting with, including no less than four SpongeBobs.

See more things I've hidden >>

Surprise plumbing issues! #oldhouseproblems

Over the weekend, we discovered we have a cracked plumbing stack. Fun times! A mysterious mildewey smell + some water leaking down into the basement + a running upstairs toilet tipped us off to a problem that (apparently) has been going on for years and years. Lucky for us, it's on the second floor and doesn't affect the function of our main bathroom.

My stairwell wall stripes had to be torn up. The upstairs shower also had to be taken out in the name of investigation.

Full disclosure, this shower was already a goner. It leaked, and we weren't 100% sure why. Turns out it likely had multiple problems, including a drain pipe that wasn't even glued into the stack! We stopped using it years ago and resolved to fix it someday. So this is not really a loss of a shower, but more of a head start on a forthcoming bathroom renovation. I'm trying to turn lemons into lemonade here.

We have a couple of plumbers coming today to give estimates on replacing the stack. Cross your fingers it's less than I've mentally prepared myself for.

It's official. We own a money pit. It's a good thing we're happy here, because we've sunk too much time and money into this house to ever leave.

Stairway update: Camouflaged plumbing access panel

Over the weekend, I finished up the plumbing access panel at the bottom of our stairway. It's the design dilemma that's been driving me crazy, the one thing holding up the completion of this project.

My initial thought was to embrace it. Showcase it. Make it look like a feature instead of an oddity. But that didn't really work.

Instead, I took the advice of reader and blogger Michele. She suggested just making it go away, and after that first failure, I totally agreed.

So I made it disappear! Hiding it in plain sight with the same striped paint treatment I did on the walls.

Of course, it's not completely invisible; you can still see the dimension of the trim. But it blends in so well, it doesn't trip up the eye anymore.

I'm calling it a success. And now I'm able to move on and put the finishing touches in the rest of the space. Another update to come posthaste!

See all the stairway related posts >>

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