Leaky New Year!!

2009 was the year our house and all the appliances inside started conspiring against us.

Early spring: washing machine won't complete a cycle needs a new timer: $250 repair

Late spring: Any time the wind blows, a whole pile of shingles fall off. A roofer replaced half of the roof (other half was fine) I forgot the cost but insurance paid for most of it.

July: Dishwasher has similar issue as washing machine but all the racks are rusting away so we decided it wasn't worth saving. New dishwasher: ~$800

July: Discovered a disconnected air return in the attic. Click here for that story.

December 10: I turned on all faucets to prevent the pipes from freezing. The next day, there was water dripping from the ceiling in one of the downstairs bedrooms. The plumber determines that the IDIOTS who remodeled our upstairs did not put a shower pan in the upstairs shower! The plumber will have to tear out bottom of shower and put in a liner. A tile guy has to replace the tile. The sheetrock needs to be repaired and checked for mold. We are currently waiting for the plumber to put us on the schedule and get that whole process rolling. I'm not looking forward to that bill.

December 28: upstairs ceiling sagging and discolored. It seems that the great Christmas Eve Blizzard of 2009 caused ice and water to come in through the new roof vents (see roof repair story above). The roofer needs to install different vents and repair drywall. Fortunately they should be picking up the tab on that.

December 31: Septic system alarm starts going off. Our septic system repair guy is on speed dial... That should tell you how often we have to call him out. Fortunately, by the time he made it out, the alarm had stopped and everything looked OK. Sprinklers must have just frozen up.

At this point, I was hoping that we had all this crap behind us... but wait, there's more!

January 5: Get a frantic call from my wife that water is coming from behind the washing machine and I need to come home right away because she has to take the kids to school. I was afraid a pipe had burst due to the cold weather we had been having lately. I got home and sucked up all the water on the floor and sucked all the water out of the washing machine (thank GOD for our ShopVac!! Best purchase we ever made) Fortunately it was just the washing machine (see first part of this story). Did I happen to mention that the washing machine is almost 10 years old? Looks like we'll be getting a new washing machine to the tune of $800.

I'm just sitting here wondering what's going to crap out next?