A Big Mess

Mike and I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy a new refrigerator. I've been bugging him to get a side by side fridge for years, mostly because I wanted the ice maker and water dispenser. Mike finally gave in when we noticed the old fridge wasn't keeping our food very fresh and it was such an old model it was guzzling energy. So we got a super deal on one from Sears and had it delivered on Saturday. I was up visiting my parents at the time (my mom is doing great by the way!) when Mike called me to inform me that we had a water line for the fridge but that it didn't connect anywhere under the sink.

So we had to have a plumber out on Wednesday to connect it up. I thought everything was all fine and well until I went to wash a load of dishes on Thursday night. I reached under our love seat (which is on the wall opposite of the sink) and felt the carpet was soaked. So I pulled out the love seat and stepped down only to find water spilling up over my toes. This of course happened at 9:00 pm but I called the plumber and insisted that he come over right away to rectify the problem. When he got here, he just kept telling us that everything looked perfectly fine under the sink. Obviously it wasn't--we used every towel in the house (at least 20) to sop up the watery mess on the other side of the wall. He then proceeded to cut apart our wall looking for the pipes. We agreed to a 6"x6" cut but ended up with around a 3'x3' hole at the end. Basically what he found was the hot water pipe was leaking. Upon seeing all the damage he had done, Mike asked the plumber if he was insured. The plumber got really defensive, so much so that he was raising his voice and threatening to leave. After all was said and done, he left after claiming all was fixed but that he could assume no responsibility for the coincidental timing of this mishap. End of saga for night number 1.

When we woke up the next day, I ran the dishwasher again and found that the pipe was STILL leaking. So we went over to our insurance agent's office and requested her counsel. She advised us to call one of their plumbers to fix the problem, then to call one of their contractors to estimate the damages. So this morning, we had different plumbers over who said the work the first plumber did had to be re-done along with all the compression nuts under the sink. They repaired the problem relatively quickly and inexpensively. Then we had the contractors over shortly after to assess the damage. They ripped up the carpet and lent us a high powered fan to dry out the carpet padding. They are supposed to come back Monday to figure out how much work needs to be done on the wall.

Our lovely living room--big asymmetrical chunk missing and carpet detached

Our lovely new fridge!