UPDATE - Hole in the Wall

Who puts a pipe behind a living room wall?

When we moved to our little apartment in Orem in November, we started trying to make the place into a home. That meant arranging all of our furniture, putting up photos and paintings, and of course, setting up the surround sound. Little did I realize that when I drilled into the wall to put in an anchor for the speaker, I would drill into a pipe!

But this wasn't a regular pipe, so it didn't burst and start spraying water everywhere. No, this was a drainage pipe for the upstairs neighbor's kitchen sink. So it...um, trickled. We put up the speakers in November. Around May, we started noticing that the carpet in the corner of the house was wet. We called our landlady about it, but it took her a couple weeks before she came over and looked at it. Then she called in a handyman, who also took a week or two to get over here. Today he cracked open the wall to reveal, duh duh duh! A pipe with a hole in it. Fantastic.

Now our landlady will probably want to get us to pay for the damage and repairs. I sure hope not, though, because, honestly, who puts a pipe behind a living room wall?

**UPDATE**

Our landlady is making us take care of (and pay for) the repairs. Luckily, my good friend Gavin is helping us with it. Hallelujah! The most ridiculous thing, after living in this house, was what she asked me when I said I had someone coming to do the repairs: "Is he a professional?" He is, but I should have said, "Why? Almost nothing else in this apartment was done by a professional."

The heat for the apartment is provided by a gas fireplace that was added after the fact. They didn't even cut out the carpet - just put it on top (oh, and there are two ugly holes on either side of it that don't belong). The wire for the control is just dangling along the wall, and all along the edge of the carpet. There is a hole cut in the master bedroom wall with a fan set in place, and a cord hanging down to plug into the outlet below, because the heat from the fireplace won't go throughout the house without it, or something like that.

Every patch job that has been done in this place (aside from the one Gavin is doing) is clearly visible, and was done very poorly. The grout lines in the bathtub seems to have been painted, or something, and I think there was mold at some point, but they painted over it / caulked over it, so there were black spots coming through. I scraped out the old caulk and redid it myself, and did the best I could with the rest of the grout - it really needs to be completely redone. There is also a hole in the kitchen ceiling where the upstairs neighbors' washer leaked and came through. They have a piece of plywood over it, with a 2x4 holding that up. Is the guy I have coming to help a professional? Yeah - he's better than anyone else you've ever hired.

Anyway, here's a picture of where we are right now: