You know those days where your master bathroom just starts smelling like a foul odor and you have absolutely no idea where it’s coming from, so you spend all day on the internet Googling what it might be from, while still trying to be productive and get work done but you’re so plagued by that smell that you just can’t give up and get to work?
Yeah. Had one of those days yesterday.
The bathroom smelled to me a little like garlic or onions or something odd. To my husband, it smelled like sewer or garbage or something else odd. We agreed it was foul and horrific and didn’t want to smell it any longer.
I tried cleaning all the things I could think of. The shower trap. The sinks. I tried lifting out the stoppers but couldn’t get them out and figured that if I went any further that I’d mess something up and we’d have to pay major money to have whatever I broke fixed. It still smelled. I thought it was the sink. I Googled some more.
I came up with a plan to clean the overflow area of each sink in the bathroom which involved “controlled flooding” of the sinks with water and bleach for two hours. Another idea was to open up the p-trap and get out any gook that might be lodged in there. This was the plan. I got back to work and waiting until husband got home so if we messed something up, we both did it. Not just me.
We did these things. Nope. Still smelly. We called my step-dad, who has done some home improvement plumbing in the past. He didn’t have any new ideas except maybe the vent under the sinks (apparently this isn’t a super common thing) were failing. We called the plumber. I was so thankful for that plumber, or set of plumbers, to come out last night. Sort of.
They looked around, did what they called a “diagnostic,” then told us they’d change out the vents to see if that’s what the smell was coming from. They changed the vents. We all determined that wasn’t the issue. The plumbers didn’t smell the smell we smelled.
In the end, we all decided that the smell could be coming from holes in the back of the wall that connect to a shared wall where all the plumbing is for our condo complex. Lovely. Husband says “it’s not our problem.” I say, “it is if I have to smell it.” We pay the plumbers a little shy of $600 to tell us there’s a hole in the wall, which we saw before they came out and to go buy spray foam to fill it up and see if that helps.
Yep. $600 for a $15 hardware store solution and to see if it helps. It was one of those days. The joys of being a first time homeowner. Strange smells. No real solutions. $600 dollars. Still smelly sinks.
