Frozen Pipes....the saga continues!

Well, after a night of dealing with 3 levels of mess...broken toilet on the top floor, mushy ceiling in the kitchen, and a rain storm in our basement last night...We got a plumber out to the house yesterday. The drainage pipe from the 2nd floor bathroom cracked and froze "somewhere" between the top floor and the sewer lines. Now doesn't that just sound delightful!

It leaked into the kitchen (pics to follow) and just rained all over the basement. You will see the area of the kitchen that it leaked into - right infront of my built-in bookcases. Unfortunately the pipe runs behind the bookcases...on the outside wall. The plumber said we'll probably have to tear them out to redirect the pipes. Oh...joy??? (excuse the mess)



And here is the lovely skylight??? Ha ha ha. No, that is the area of my ceiling below the floor in the bathroom!


Gary went out and bought a shop vac last night. He thought it would be "great" to have one and it could "suck up the water" (and whatever gross stuff) was in the toilet upstairs! So he went out in the sub zero temps and bought himself the big daddy of shopvac's. Guys are so funny about stuff. I got to put it together and then we went upstairs to do the job. It worked GREAT! He then proceeded to push the darn machine down the hallway - I told him not to spill water on the carpeting and would he like ...help? Oh no, he's got it...and then the inevitable...the big OH F*!K came...hurry up and get towels. He lost control of the big beast and it tipped over....going down my stairs. You would have been proud... I didn't threaten him with divorce over his stubborn stupidity! What is with guys????

Now the stairs & carpeting are clean. We cleaned up the kitchen as much as humanly possible as well as the upstairs bathroom.

Our supposed options include:
Tear out the bookcases and that side of the house, redirect the drainage lines and rebuid.
Or...
Blow in a bunch of insultation and hope it doesn't happen again.
Or...
Move the draining lines inside and build a box like structure to house them. Build a second box like structure (I hope this makes sense) on the other side of the built'in's to make it look like it was "supposed" to be that way.

What will happen??? Who knows but we have a Christmas party to go to...so I've got fun stuff to do today!