Sometimes owning your home isn’t all that much fun

On Sunday morning I shaved my legs in the 2nd floor bathroom, in the tub.  When I was done everything looked and sounded normal so I went on with my day.  We went out to a birthday party for Chris’ sisters for a few hours.  When we came home I saw some fresh water on the drain of that bath tub, and that’s not normal considering it had been at least 6 hours since I used the water.  Then I also heard some strange noises coming from the tap.  It sounded like to water was not completely shut off.  I opened the hot and cold up, then turned them off.  Sound was still there.
After some trial and error I found that the hot water control was not functioning properly.  It was not shutting off 100% and it made worse noises when I attempted to close the valve further.  So I got it to as good a point as I could and went to bed. There was an occasional drip and some quiet noise, but it would have to wait until morning.
Chris came to bed over an hour later and made sure to wake me up to tell me that something was not right in that bathroom.  Of course I yell at him “You didn’t touch that bath tub, did you?”  Poor guy.  So I get out of bed, one eye open, the other on its way, and stomp off to check out the situation.  To his credit the sound had gotten worse and the drip was coming down faster.  Time to find the shut-off for this sucker.  Look around.  It’s not under the bathroom vanity so the only other place to hide it would be in the space between that vanity and the tub, which is enclosed and trimmed out.
Next come out the orders for Chris to run downstairs and get me a chisel, hammer, and cutting tool.  I scored the caulking, removed the wood trim, pried off the  metal flashing, destroyed the fake tile-looking wall material, all for nothing.  Behind all of those materials was just 2×4 after 2×4 nailed together to create a box around the pipes, and no shut-off.  So my pissed off and still half-asleep self stomps down to the basement with the intention of shutting off all water to the 2nd floor and figuring it out in the morning.  But when I got down there it occurred to me that there are separate shut-offs for hot and cold, and even for the 1st and 2nd floors.  I was able to shut off just the hot water to the 2nd floor.  Thank goodness.  This should buy us some time.
We tested to be sure that it was shut off, and that we had no more drips or sounds.  I declared myself a genius, and we went to bed.
Next steps are to have this fixed, then figure out how to cover up the ugliness that I have created since we are not in a position, currently, to remodel the bath (although we would love to dearly).  Such is life, and homeownership.
On the flip side of that, I get to borrow Sue‘s babies this week.  Kyra and Mitchell will be coming over on Friday night to bake cookies with their Auntie Jessie (and probably to play drums with Uncle Chris) while their parents work.  I can’t wait!
J