It's never good when the bid includes a backhoe...

Our recurring drain issues (stuff put down the kitchen sink comes up the toilet in the next room - salsa = super ick!) were finally diagnosed last night. Turns out during all that rain last summer more than just our back patio settled. The sewer (actually septic in our case) line came apart and is now offset by a couple of inches filled with dirt and roots (meaning that anything that went down in that bathroom or the kitchen is now out in the soil under our backyard... blech). Today, a backhoe, a jackhammer (oh, did I mention that means we have to remove our entire back patio - something we planned to do anyway but maybe not right this very second - because part of the reason why this happened is that the material used for the waste lines has not held up well over the last 40+ years so we need to replace the whole thing), and lots and lots of pea gravel (called pee gravel in the bid... struck me as funny) will arrive in our backyard and everything within about 10 feet of the (40 foot) line will be dug up (roughly 8 feet down). I am so very glad I didn't "do" the backyard last year!

Suffice it to say we could have gone on a really nice trip to Mexico this spring break for what that's going to cost - then we have to solve the patio/deck decision and get that going ASAP (gulp $$). Good thing "staycations" are all the rage in these belt-tightening times!

Funny thing is K and I are just going with the flow (haha) on this one. I guess we're both unwilling to mess with sewage issues. As much as a trip would be more fun, a geyser of sewage would be so completely un-fun that it trumps all thoughts of a tropical escape.

I'll try to snap pics along the way - should be interesting!