Keep Chopping Wood. Monday, June 19.

Monday, June 19

Things are rarely as complicated as we make them out to be.

​Last week I went to get something out of our pantry and noticed the carpet was wet. I got everything out and set up a fan to dry it out. 24 hours later, it was still wet. Not great.

We called a plumber, and they came out, looked around for a couple of hours, and said to my wife, “We know there’s a leak. We just can’t find it. It’s a very slow leak, so it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. We have some options, but we’ll email you what they are and an estimated quote for each option.” They told her it would be an extensive job and costly. She thought we needed a different plumber, and I agreed.

My wife had already ripped out the carpet and sent me a picture of the area. You could tell where the water had come through based on some discoloration on the floor. I told her to rip out some of the sheetrock above that spot and see if that revealed anything. Sure enough, a pipe was behind it, with water dripping out very slowly. We had found the leak, and it took all of 5 minutes.

A second plumber came out, confirmed that the water was coming from that pipe and not just dripping off at that point, and had it fixed in under 15 minutes. He could not believe that the previous crew hadn’t ripped out the sheetrock to look. “What exactly did they do for 2 hours?” All they did was create more problems to an easy solution. In the 15 minutes it took him to fix the issue, we got a quote for $5000 and $7000 from the other company for them to return, rip up half the house, find the leak, and fix it. $5000-7000 and several hours (potentially days) of work to “fix” something another plumber fixed in under 15 minutes for $75.

Too often, we look for the most complicated solution to our problems, especially when it comes to getting better. We get stressed out, anxious, and overwhelmed, making things far more complex than they need to be. A simpler solution is almost always available.

Don’t overcomplicate the work. Just take the next step and move forward. Simple wins.
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Keep chopping wood. 🪵🪓

-Kevin