One day we noticed a damp spot near the floor on the hallway. On the second day the spot got bigger and when our downstairs neighbour called us that they too had a damp spot on their ceiling, we knew that something was wrong.
Right there, where the spot in the hallway was, we knew we had the main water pipe that ran through all 3 floors. So we had nothing else to do but use a hammer and find the leak. After a couple of hours and a big hole in the wall we found the pipe. Strangely enough the pipe was dry. So that pipe wasn’t leaking. Now we had a mistery on our hands, because as far as we knew there was no other pipe possible to be to blame for the leak.
After a quick discussion we decided to make little test holes in the wall in the kitchen. And there it was! Leading to nowhere! As it turned out it was an old lead pipe which already leaked about 15 years ago and whoever repaired it did a very bad repair. Instead of extracting the whole pipe out, he only cut it where it leaked and repaired the leak. So we were left with about a meter of an old pipe in the wall.
The repair itself was pretty straightforward. We closed the main water supply, unscrewed the old pipe and put a cap where the pipe used to be. But we were left with two big holes, one in the hallway and one in the kitchen.
First Evgen mixed a batch of rough plaster and filled the big holes. Then he waited for the plaster to dry and had to redid it the next day because of the depth of the holes. Then came sanding and a layer of a finer plaster. Next day the same story. The third day a layer of an even finer plaster and you guessed it sanding again. I cleaned the wall with a damp cloth and it was ready for paint.
We picked a nice mellow gray tone for the walls. It’s called Night jewels 5 by Dulux. First I taped a line near the ceiling and around the doors and windows. We didn’t bother to be careful near the floors, because they were next in line on our to do list. It needed two coats of paint. Thank you Polona for helping me with the painting!
Next day, when the paint was dry, instead of new tiles Evgen applied a couple of thin coats of Domflok by Helios. It is a clear topcoat for the protection of heavily burdened dispersion-painted interior walls. We were very happy with this overcoat in a previous project, so it was a go to product, when we were debating on what to do with this wall. Before the application of the topcoat he taped a horizontal line 60 cm above the counter and around the doors.
Next came the floors… but more on that next time!
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