The other day my girl and I were chillaxin’ around the living room when all of a sudden I get a “Honey, why is our ceiling dripping?”. In a split second I went from totally relaxed to completely freaked out. Why WOULD our ceiling be dripping? How does that even happen?

In case you couldn’t tell, we are new homeowners.

After gathering my wits and taking a few seconds to actually think about it, we realized that our master tub is directly above this sneaky ceiling. I jolted upstairs and started analyzing the situation. I checked for holes, cracks, missing tiles, leaks, you name it. While I did notice the need to brush up on my caulking (what a funny word!) skills, there was nothing awry that the human eye could see.

As with all sticky situations, I immediately called my mom… just like 3rd grade all over again :) Something you also didn’t know, was that I was even a realtor for 3 months a cple years back, so I should have DEF. known what to do! At any rate, mom was much more calm and collected, and brought up two major points which never crossed my mind:

A) Did I check the crawl space behind the tub to see where it’s leaking? What a novel approach! To my credit, I never knew these existed as normally I’d just call management to get ‘er fixed up. But apparently most master bathrooms have a section cut off, and blocked off, to easily access the back of the tub. So I grabbed my handy screwdriver and flashlight, and took a peek. And voila, there it was! The space between the tub & the tube had water stains. So now I at least knew where it was coming from.

B) The second thing she asked, was if we had a home warranty? This one immediately calmed my nerves just by listening to the words come out. I had TOTALLY forgot we picked one up right before closing! Of course, this could have had the opposite effect if I had rejected my realtor knowledge and didn’t spend the extra money for one :) How awesome right?

We called a preferred plumber from our warranty company (HMS Warranty. I highly recommend!), and within 48 hours we had it all fixed up. Luckily enough the damages to the house were almost nil, and it didn’t cause much ruckus to our wallets either.

It costs us $360 for the year, with a deductible of only $100. Any costs on top of that are totally covered by HMS. Besides plumbing, it also covers the following (quoted from their site):

“breakdowns in major systems like plumbing, electrical, heating and air conditioning as well as washer, dryer, oven, refrigerator and other items.”

Talk about peace of mind! Warranties like these *might* only be picked up when purchasing or selling a house, but it’s definitely something to consider. All I know is, I’m definitely renewing it when it comes around next month!