Weekend a few weeks ago..
A few weeks ago, on Sunday, we came back from the flea markets and it was a good Sunday out with more than 11k steps (go me!) which was a happy day in general. We had good weather, I gained at least 1 shade of colour on my skin, and the best thing was that I also scored two nice (cheap) things. No that's a lie, the best thing was that we had a really nice day out of the house!
The evening balanced out the good..
Our daughter was just in her bed when I suddenly heard my boyfriend shout "How did this happen, wtf, how did I manage to do this?" but he didn't answer what he did so I had no clue what he was talking about until he said "I need your help". I came to the small bathroom/toilet and saw the floor filled with water. Oh no...
That toilet has a cistern and it's "floating" about 15 cm from the wall. He accidentally leaned to the back and then the whole thing came off. The plastic screws inside broke and all water from the cistern was now on the floor but the water also kept running so he needed to close the tap quickly. While I held the thing in place, he grabbed his tools and a bit later the water stopped running. This toilet was out of order. I actually put a piece of paper stating that on the toilet door as well to make sure he would not accidentally use it again until it was fixed.
Easy and cheap fix!
The only thing needed to fix this were a few screws and I went online to check which of the construction markets sold them because the one nearest to us doesn't have the same items. I took the screws with me and a link to the needed item and dropped off the little one at school to continue my drive to the construction market where I found the screws needed for just €2,30. With my guy fixing it himself the water incident ended up being a minor inconvenience instead of a true issue needing a plumber. Great! I love it when something seems horrible at first but turns out to be not that big of a deal.
The second incident
This one was a bit worse, especially for our downstairs neighbour as he's the one dealing with water damage, we are only dealing with a remaining smelly scent as no water is currently running through the big bathroom's pipes. What happened?
I let our daughter sit in bath to play for a bit after I washed her hair as she often asks me but usually she does that when it's already getting late so then I put her under the shower to be done with it and dry her hair to get her in bed quicker. This time it was early and I already had dinner ready so all went smooth. Time to let her enjoy the bath for a bit.
When pulling out the plug that smell I hate so much (it happened once before) appeared and I knew instantly my feet were going to get wet because the floor was flooded. It was about a month ago (I think) when it happened and I totally forgot about it afterwards as she didn't sit in the bath anymore since. Also, we thought that the first incident was caused by some blockage which was removed at the time. I guess that was not the main issue.
Wet floor
The floor in the bathroom was wet but not as bad as the previous time when we had the water running through the hallway into the direction of the kitchen! I thought this was because this time my boyfriend was there to fix it sooner and he knew where to look this time, looking back it was not getting as wet because the downstairs neighbour was taking the hit, ouch.
I was already drying my daughter's hair when the doorbell rang and the guy from downstairs said his bathroom was flooded (it really was worse even on the floor than it was here) so my boyfriend went to check it and take pictures to contact our landlady. What a shame for him because he has such a nice home, it must feel extra shit when something like this happens, our bathroom looks horrible compared to his, lol. But with a bat tub having rusty parts it was clear that there has been little maintenance in this bathroom so the tubing probably sucks as well.
Insurance
This is of course insurance work and looking at the bath in that bathroom this may be a bigger issue than they now think. Many things have already been fixed and or replaced but remembering the faulty electrical stuff not working properly I wonder if we are in for a bigger treat soon.
For the leakage insurance has been notified and thankfully we have another bathroom we can use but every time I open the water in the kitchen I now worry that our neighbour runs above to mention that this is leaking as well, while I have so much to do this week in terms of tidying up the house. I hope insurance appears soon (which I don't expect, this is Spain) and that the fixing will happen soon because I can't imagine it will be a quick and easy fix.
Update
The insurance guy visited us last week, as suspected a new bath tub needed because the rust turns out to have holes in it already. They came to check what the repair would cost a few days later, we suspect this is not covered by insurance and will be paid by the landlady. Thankfully there was some good news too because we can use the sink as well as toilet without worrying that water will end up in the bathroom of our downstairs neighbour.
I can only hope that they will come to fix it within the next weeks as we suspect it will be a bit of an inconvenience and we hope to have it repaired before one heatwave after the other hits our home. The tiny bathroom has very low water pressure but it's better than nothing.
We've been through worse..
Let's say that us having a spare bathroom we can use is nothing compared to the challenge we had last year in the other apartment where we didn't have any water for close to a month. This too shall pass and I just hope for the neighbour things will be fixed rather quickly.
Have you ever had any water damage in your home? Was it coming from your home or were you the "lucky" one receiving the damage from another apartment? Was insurance fixing things within reasonable time frames or did they leave you hanging? Let me know in the comments below if you want to share..
Wishing you a good day/night, I'm heading to bed!
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