Nothing. There's Nothing To Be Found.

So Mr. Handyman came over just a bit before 1PM yesterday, got the closet door on up in the guest room, etc. Then put another small hole in my kitchen ceiling, in one of the areas I'm hearing that elusive drip.

 

And what did we see? You got it, nothing.

The joists run one way and the spacers running the other, so when you look up it's like little compartments.

One direction

 The other direction

There's not one damned thing to see. No pipes, no sign of water leakage whatsoever. Everything is perfectly dry in the areas we checked. Granted, he didn't take out the entire ceiling, just the little bit in the pic above, which he had to enlarge slightly to repair. 

I absolutely can't explain the sound, but I've been living in this house for 11 years and the sound is a new one. There was no mistaking the rapid drip, drip, drip before the caulking (and that would have been in another "compartment"), but I'm completely at a loss over the continued slow, intermittent drip after showering.

Frankly, I'm disappointed. I didn't expect to trace the source of the "leak" today, but I did expect to see pipes. Was actually looking forward to seeing where the bathtub drain pipe goes.

So the hole has been patched, the first coat of mud is on it; ditto for the hole above the stove, the one that exposed the bathtub drain pipes a couple of weeks ago.

If there's water leaking somewhere, I'll just have to wait until I see a water stain. And in the meantime, I'm not going to tear apart the ceiling any further. It will drive me a bit batty (battier), this mystery water sound, but until it manifests itself visually--and short of tearing everything completely apart--there's nothing further to be done. Except some priming and painting.

As for the guest room closet, here's before, during and mostly done:

 Bulkhead is made.

Closet door is on. It looks a little odd because the doors are 24-inches wide each, whereas the total closet width is only 43-inches. So there's too much overlap on the doors. However, the next home owners can feel free to order custom-sized doors, as it's not in my budget to spend that kind of money. I'm just glad I have a closet again!

Mr. Handyman has to come back for more mudding in the kitchen, a bit of sanding, some touch-ups in the closet and some caulking where the bulkhead meets the ceiling. Then I have priming and painting to do, but the closet will wait for a bit.

Next up will be repainting the upper hallway, and then downstairs (will have to redo the kitchen ceiling anyway). I'm having Mr. Handyman do the parts in the upper hall, over the stairwell, that I can't reach. And it just occurred to me that I ought to have him do the trim in the upper hall too. I've had baseboard and quarter round in the garage for the past few years, for the upper hallway, but of course haven't gotten around to doing it. I already have a little compound mitre saw, so it shouldn't be a problem to do. I must make a note to ask him when he's here later today.

I took a half-day's vacation for this...LOL. Well, at least I finished off my taxes (my good copy, had done the rough draft a couple of weeks ago), wrote my cheque to the Receiver General and have it ready to be mailed tomorrow. Canada's deadline is April 30th, so I have lots of time.  :-)

Not a total waste of an afternoon. Though I'd just like to go on record as saying that the government could at least provide postage-paid envelopes. But nope, they never do!