My apartment realty company and I have had an ongoing battle for over a year now…about my bathroom.
Note: This post is LONG, but I need to sit down and write it out if for nothing else, but documentation purposes. I use this as a journal and this is something that I felt like I needed to sit down and write it out, however, if you choose to skip off this post, it won’t hurt my feelings ;)
For those of you still reading, here’s a timeline of the drama to get you up to speed:
February 2010 – I started noticing the ceiling above my shower was turning dark. I originally chalked it up to shower steam, but when it started turning black, we e-mailed maintenance letting them know about the issue, and suggested that they might need to check for a leak. They said it was probably just steam from the shower, and that there was nothing really they could do about it other than come paint. I knew that it would be a long-drawn out process to set up a time for them to come paint, so we decided we’d tackle painting it ourselves later.
March 2010 – January 2011 – The dark spots got worse. No, we never got around to painting over it, but again, we were told it was just mold on the surface so we were just trying to find the time.
February 2011 – My parents and Alex had just left from my birthday weekend. I walked into the bathroom and noticed the floor was wet and that there was water dripping from the sprinkler head in my bathroom ceiling. I put my mop bucket under the drip, mopped up the water, and called my parents, who in turn, called/e-mailed maintenance the next morning.
Water Dripping from Maegan Slaten on Vimeo.
They came out, checked it (of course it wasn’t dripping at the time they arrived), said that there was definitely an issue and went upstairs to investigate. When they came back, they told me that it seemed that my upstairs neighbor wasn’t using his shower curtain properly, and water was all over the floor. The theory was that water had been getting on the floor every time he took a shower, and had been seeping under the bathtub (which is right above mine), and had gotten so saturated that it started dripping out of the first exit point, which happened to be the sprinkler head. They told me that they would leave him a note asking him to use his shower curtain, and would send someone the next week to paint over it. I asked him if there was any way possible that it was a leak (since the water spots started right over my shower/bathtub rather in the middle of the ceiling where it started dripping out) and he said no. He left, and that was that.
March 2011 - No one came to check and/or paint over anything, and unfortunately, the dripping continued, but it was only occasionally. Since we were pretty much told there wasn’t anything we could do about it, and that they would check in with us, we didn’t do much except learn to walk around the pink bucket that now had a permanent residence in the middle of my bathroom floor.
April 2011 – The weeks prior the tornado, the dripping starting picking up. With my crazy school schedule, I decided to wait until school wrapped up the first week of May so that I didn’t have folks in and out of my apartment while I was finishing up classes. Then, the tornado hit, and with us trying to get out of town, and the whole city picking up the pieces (including the realty company which lost 150 houses), the water issue seemed minute.
April 23rd
April 24th
April 27th (creepy considering this was taken hours before the tornado hit)
May 2011 – August 2011 - When I returned to Tuscaloosa on May 1st, the bucket in my bathroom was overflowing. 
Again, because of all the stuff going on around here, we didn’t want to call and complain, so I just dealt with it. Even better, the drip seemed to stop completely for about a month. One weekend, Alex was here visiting and I noticed there was orange in the bottom of my light fixture globe. Alex tapped it with the broom handle it was clearly orange sludge and water, but I decided to shut off the lights and since I would be gone the majority of July, I would deal with it when I got back, especially since I had no drips a month or so.
August 2011 – I came back from my mini-vacay in Montgomery, just long enough to switch out some clothes/do some laundry before heading home until school started back. I walked in the bathroom, flipped on the light and the light over my toilet/shower area didn’t come on, but rather just made this terrible buzzing noise. Not to mention, water was pouring out of the ceiling. Thankfully, I had put a bucket there so it caught some of the water, but not at all of it. I quickly shut the lights off, and went to grab a lamp so that I could do some stuff in the bathroom before calling them in the morning, and heading home. Just as I was about to plug in the lamp in the one wall outlet I have in the bathroom, I noticed it was dark spots around the outlet. I grabbed a flashlight, and this is what I saw
If you can’t tell, that is mold growing around the outlet, and the wet wall underneath. Those dark lines are water running out of the wall/outlet! I looked closer, and saw that that particular side of my counter, and everything on it was soaked.
The water pooled in the crevice around my counter
I was so thankful that I noticed it before I plugged my lamp in that particular outlet! I immediately pulled the breakers for everything in the bathroom, found an extension cord, and plugged it up in the hall so I could get a better look at everything. It was pretty bad…
Just a general picture to give you an idea of the layout of my bathroom.
The sink is on the other side of the shower where you see the dividing wall on the left. The sprinkler head is right in front of the light fixture, but got cut off in this picture. Remember, it started out over the shower, then the sprinkler head, then the light, and now the outlets, so you can see how far it has gone.
The water in the light fixture (the dark stuff)
The wall that separates my sink, and the shower…you can see some of the mold on the other side of the divider. This is the wall where the outlet was.
The mold over the shower, at its worst.
It had started circling the ceiling in my bedroom too.
My mom sent an e-mail out the next day (we’ve learned from experience that getting things down in writing is much more effective, especially when you can easily CC the realty company owner ;)), explained the severity of the situation, and how we just couldn’t “wait” on them anymore and they came out to check.
The maintenance man, who originally came out in February and has been working with the company for a while, remembered me and my situation and imeadiately asked if anyone ever followed up with me in February. When I told him they didn’t, he mad and said that they definitely “dropped the ball” on that one and profusely apologized telling me that he reported it to the maintenance director and the director was supposed to dispatch someone to come fix it. Whatever, I didn’t care…I just wanted it fixed.
He took the fixture down and emptied it out and said he still felt it was an issue with the shower curtain not being used properly (from here on out, this idea will now be known as the “shower curtain theory” which has become the bane of my existence). He went upstairs, checked and said that it appeared that the guy had just taken a shower and the floor was wet. He said that he was going to put up a splash guard up in the shower upstairs to try to remedy the situation, and told me to let him know if it dripped any more. We didn’t buy the “shower curtain theory” the first time it was mentioned, and I didn’t believe it then either, so I asked him again if there was any possible way it was the drain (by the way, this would make the third time we have suggested the idea that it might be a leak from a pipe/drane), and he said no and went on.
About 3 hours later, I went in the bathroom and water was dripping out of the light fixture. We called/emailed them, and told them that this would be the perfect time to test out said theory. They said they would try to get around to coming back out there, but they didn’t know if they would make it before the end of the work day. I attempted to go upstairs and do a little investigating on my own, but since the guy didn’t come to the door, my plans failed.
By the time maintenance got there, around 6, the guy had already left, so they just went in and checked his apartment. They still felt like it was the shower curtain, so he said that he would come back the next day and try something else. That night it dripped from 4:00 pm until at least midnight.
The next evening, after they were supposed to do something else upstairs, I walked into my bathroom and there was water dripping out of the light fixture (both sides), sprinkler head, AND outlets. I was grabbing every garbage can I could around the house just to catch the drips. I called mom and just cried because I was SO frustrated. I couldn’t get ready in my bathroom, couldn’t do laundry, and I had to dodge buckets every time I went in there. I was already a couple of days late from my original planned “go home” date and had to cancel a few plans, and the fact that I was waiting on this and they had no solution was beyond annoying.
My mom sent a pretty snippy e-mail to them the next morning, about how I needed to be their top priority and they came out, about an hour later, wielding a saw-all, and telling me they were cutting the ceiling out (they were not happy, but neither was I, so for once I didn’t care that someone was pissed at me haha). Before I knew it, they had thrown down a tarp, put a ladder in my bathtub and were sawing away.
I knew what had been dripping out of the ceiling, and could only imagine what was still up there, so despite their suggestions that “everything would be fine”, I was yanking down everything in the bathroom that could get damaged from an impending flood of mold/mildew, and sludgy water.
My bathroom decor hastily piled in the hallway.
Good thing too because as soon as he released the chunk of ceiling, black sludge and moldy water came pouring out all on top of him. I hate to say that I had a difficult time stifling a giggle and even more so when he looked up in there and said, it looks like there’s a leak in the drain. I have never wanted to say “Told ya so” as bad as I did that moment, but I kept my mouth shut.
All that black stuff streaking down the walls was black slime from the ceiling. Nasty.
My bathtub after the flood of junk
After they swallowed their pride and admitted they were wrong the entire time, they headed upstairs to fix the leak. Apparently, after cutting out the neighbor’s bathroom closet floor to get it, they realized that the drain had shifted and some of the water was dripping down into the ceiling rather than going down the pipe. Even though I knew that’s probably what it was, it made me shudder to think that I was getting his dirty bath water…gross.
They cleaned up the bathroom, and told me that they had to wait a week or so for everything to dry out before they could finish it up. I decided since my bathroom was out of commission, I would just go home until this week, when we started back to school.
So that brings us to today, they originally said they were coming on Wednesday, and of course no one showed. Mom e-mailed them yesterday to get some sort of timeline, and when they didn’t respond, she finally called them to find out what the plans were. They said that “the guy” would be here sometime, mid-morning today. Currently it is almost noon, and no sign. Sigh…looks like I will be showering over at my brother’s apartment again for the next few days.
Stay tuned….
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So, here’s my life this week as viewed by my Blackberry…
