The Super [Manly] Sleuth and His Lovely Dutch Assistant. A Story.

Once upon a time, a very lovely couple sat at their computer looking at dream houses.  Suddenly, from the other room, a commotion! Gathering, from the sound they heard, that an elephant was emptying his swollen bladder on the living room floor, they ran to see.  There was no elephant, but there was a gallon of water on the carpet that had recently, very recently, been spilled forth from a bulging ceiling.

The sleuth ran upstairs with his heavy flashlight to find the source.  The sleuth then proceeded to tap on every inch of floor upstairs to try and find out where the leaking was coming from.  He looked, and tapped, and looked and tapped.  The assistant corresponded by cell phone so as not to yell from downstairs to upstairs, waking the children.  The sleuth and the assistant were married you see.  They may have used the opportunity, while on their phones, to whisper sweet nothings in one another's ears.  Or maybe not.
And still, the ceiling was dripping...

And tearing...
And dripping...

 And tearing some more...

Until they decided it would be best to conduct a "controlled" loss of the ceiling rather than wait for it to come crashing down.  The Dutch [but really just partly Swedish] assistant may or may not have videotaped the "cutting of the panel", just in case another gallon of water came rushing into the face of the manly sleuth.  She didn't want to miss something potentially funny, naturally.  (No gallon came rushing down.  It was just a boring, run of the mill removal of living room ceiling.)

This, of course, is post mess clean up of 'said' drywall from ceiling.  The assistant may have forgotten to suggest laying down a tarp before the "removal".

At this point in the story, we find the assistant perched atop the ladder with the flashlight fixed down through the rafters to the location of the leak.  She hears the manly assistant head upstairs with a drill.  She then runs after him, afraid that he is taking it upon himself to "drill" something, somewhere.  As "renters", the assitant is very, shall we say "uncomfortable" with this assertiveness.  She may have told him very forcefully to "please not drill any holes!!" a little louder than she should have with sleeping children.  Of course, the lovely assistant (didn't I mention she was lovely?  She was, er, is) realized how smart the sleuth actually was when we found him in their bathroom simply using the drill to unscrew a panel behind the shower.
Thank goodness for all the cobwebs because in the dust, he was able to see the fine stream of water spraying forth from this very corroded pipe.   Do you see the stream?  Look closely and then try and guess how long it's been doing that.

Enter the invaluable talents of the "Dutch boy" assistant (except please try and remember that the Dutch Boy assistant is actually a partially Swedish lovely young woman, with, hopefully, a better haircut.)  She plugged the hole with her finger while the manly man when to find the duct tape.
She waited.
And waited.
And switched fingers when they started to cramp.

And finally after 15 minutes the manly man returned with the duct tape but she had to be woken with a kiss (or a little kick to wake her up before she fell off her perch on the toilet.)

Here is what I am grateful for.
Clark is here.  There have been lots of leaks and breaks and messes that he has not been present for over the years (see March 2010 entry for example.)  It is so much more fun to clean up soggy drywall with someone.
We rent.
We deal with a very good, thorough and prompt property management company (very unlike our last one.)
Clark and I work well together.  We actually had a little bit of fun even though it was past our bedtime and I was getting cranky.  I'm sure it would have been a lot less fun if we knew that we had to pay to fix it.

However, I need to dash out this morning to get in my lost errands of yesterday, before the property management calls me back and instructs me to wait in my house for a repairman from 8-3, everyday, for as long as it takes to fix a leaky pipe, wet drywall and a 3 foot hole in the ceiling.

Aren't you glad I have taken pictures of the whole ordeal?  It would not have been nearly as exciting if I hadn't been thinking about blogging it.
It's way better than what I had planned today...that being the complaint about how since we have early release from school every Monday, my disaster-strewn-house-from-the-weekend actually lasts through Tuesday because my Monday is so short I don't have time to get anything done.
Yeah, this was way better.