Ah, There It Is.
Yeah, I knew things were going way too smoothly. Like energy, misery is always conserved.
So Saturday night I was sitting at my computer, and kept hearing a steady noise. After a while my wife noticed it too, and we determined it was coming from the wall between our kitchen and living room, and sounded like water running through a pipe when a faucet is open somewhere. But of course no faucets were open, so as you might imagine, we presumed it was a leak somewhere. It wasn't a total surprise--we'd noticed some dampness around the kitchen sink on occasion, but figured it was just from splashes the kids might make. At any rate, I immediately shut off the water to the house, and first thing Sunday morning we arranged for a plumber to come out and take a look.
Guy comes out Sunday afternoon, spends a moment checking it out, and decides pretty quickly it's a slab leak. For those unfamiliar, here in Florida most houses are built on a concrete slab poured directly onto the ground--no basements or even crawl spaces. And that means the water supply comes in underground and then up through the slab. When there's a leak in those pipes, it can be Very Bad because it can literally undermine the foundation of the house--and fixing it is no easy task, because it means going down through the concrete to get to the pipes. So this was bad news. Dude gives us a quote ($3400) and arranges for a crew to fix it the next day, i.e., today.
Those guys show up this morning, take a look, and say they think Dude #1 gave us the wrong diagnosis. They cut into the wall, and say yup, there's the problem--the leak is right here, not down in the slab. So we're thinking fantastic, that should be a much cheaper and less destructive repair, and all we have to fix is a wall or two, no big deal after all! Ha!
So they fix the leak, noting that it appears it's been leaking for some time--they also call a company to come in to dry everything out and assess the water damage (mold is always a big concern here, being such a hot and humid hellhole of a state). Those folks come in, tear up some more walls, and say yeah, this has been leaking for a while and it's all moldy and everything is going to need to be replaced. "Everything" meaning, basically, the entire kitchen.
Now as you might imagine, having just gone live on the market, we were not planning to do a kitchen remodel. Indeed, the realtor we first spoke to advised against it--the kitchen is old and clearly needs to be updated, he said, but the buyer would probably rather choose their own stuff, right? Made sense to us.
So now we have an insurance adjuster coming out this week, hopefully, and we'll find out how much they're willing to contribute to replacing all of this. Since (again) the kitchen is so old, we're expecting they'll lowball us, offering maybe 30%. Admittedly, that's better than nothing (though we also have a $1k deductible). But still, we really didn't plan to spend $10k or more on a kitchen renovation just before selling! On the bright side, an updated kitchen adds value, and we can increase the asking price accordingly--so maybe it will work out to our benefit in the end.
Still, this was really a major hurdle we were not expecting. And the timing is obviously terrible--we JUST went live and started having showings, and now we're going to have to pull it down while we do this work. Time is something we don't have a whole lot of, if we want to stick to our schedule!
Wish us luck, anyway. :/