The Ceiling is Leaking. It Must be Monday.

It's funny, the feeling in the pit of your home-owning stomach when someone says, "What's that dark patch on the ceiling?"

Kind of like the feeling you get right at the point where the roller-coaster starts heading down that first hill.

Like you left your stomach far behind you, way up in the air.

I hate plumbing.

The first thought that occurred to us was, naturally, that there was some kind of bathtub leak from the second floor, since the ceiling in the living room is almost directly below the second-floor bathroom.

But when I went up there and checked the bathtub and the caulking and the flooring and just about everything else I could think of, there was no sign of any kind of leak.

Then I looked again at the location of the dark patch on the ceiling and it didn't exactly line up with the bathroom; it was more in line with Mary's room.

And she doesn't have any plumbing in her room.  That I know of.

Which could only mean one other possibility: a random pipe leaking in the ceiling above the living room.

Oh, joy.

I took off my shoes and stood on the arm of the couch (which my mother told me never to do!) and reached up with my finger and touched the dark patch on the ceiling and ... it was mushy.  Completely water-logged.  I pushed my finger through the (not-so-very-dry)wall with ease.

Now there was no going back.  I had taken the first step; now there would be serious consequences.

Which meant serious tools.

So I went out to the garage and grabbed my drywall saw and a blue tarp and a flashlight, and Mary fetched the kitchen step ladder; and I lay the tarp over the couch and the floor and set the step ladder on top of the tarp next to the couch; and I climbed up on the step ladder and reached up with my drywall saw and poked the tip through the hole I'd created with my little finger and started cutting the (not-so-very-dry)wall until there was a six-inch diameter hole through which I could see into the joist space above the ceiling.

And now I could see the problem.

There was a "T" junction directly above the hole.

And a little drop of water clinging to the bottom of the pipe.

And it clung to the pipe for just a few seconds more before it teared up and fell down, down, down - all the way down to the tarp.

Sploosh.

Hmmm.

I went back out to the garage and reached down below my workbench and grabbed the little sand-colored bucket and brought it back into the living room and placed it strategically on the tarp and waited a few minutes.

Sploosh-tink!

Bulls-eye.