Casa Walsho Springs a Leak!

Somehow, I probably deserved this... Not sure why, but I probably did. We took possession of our lovely new townhouse last night. First order of business was to install full shelving in the closet of our bedroom. It has a small walk-in closet which we really need to take advantage of... Due to the small space we have. At the back of the closet the original builder installed one, yes people... Just one measly shelf. Kinda pointless right? Uh, yeah. So, after measuring out all the studs I decided that before I headed to the store to get the shelving I would just take that one shelf outta there because it was not going to work for us anyway. Little did I know what awaited me when I did that! As I turned the very first screw our of the wall, I heard a strange hissing noise. As I continued to turn the screw out, it got louder and louder... What is that? I thought... What in egad's name have they screwed through on the other side of the wall? And then fizz-whooosh! Water starts spraying out of my wall! You can imagine my stunned response as I feverishly wound the screw back in as tight as it would go and then went running around the apartment shutting off water valves not knowing if I was having any effect or not.

Here is a picture of what it looked like when I finally got the water stopped. Luckily I was quick enough to just figure that if I got that screw back into whatever it came out of I would be fine. As it turns out that's what saved the day! They had drilled that mounting screw right into the sprinkler supply which is on a completely different water system than the household water. So, even though I turned off the household water, it wouldn't have stopped the gushing had I not got that screw back into the pipe, and it would have been minutes not seconds that the water was rushing down inside my walls and would have most certainly cause a ton of damage. I would have had to call 911 or something to get the sprinkler system shut off!

So much for "not having to do anything" as a result of moving into a new place! Someone told me that "you have to live through one of these incidents to develop empathy for your home." As I fill and sand all the wholes the idiot who mounted the shelf improperly created I tell myself "I am learning to love my home..."