I recently helped a home buyer purchase a beautiful Livermore home for sale. The home for sale was in a mature neighborhood and was a real gem. The sellers of the home seemed to have taken great care of the property over the past ten years that they had lived there. Today, the home was updated beautifully and in pristine condition.

Upon getting our offer accepted, we performed our typical home inspections to make sure that everything with the home was sound and nothing major was wrong. Except for some small odd and end things that the seller agreed to fix, we found this Livermore home for sale to be in great shape. There was however one item which turned out to be a big deal and cost upwards of $5,000 to repair (keep reading and I can tell you how you can prevent from having it happen to you).

During our termite inspection, we noticed that some of the baseboards in the hall bathroom were warped and had signs of previous water damage. This led my inspector to anticipate that water from the tub had continuously spilled over from the shower and possibly had done more serious damage to the subflooring under the tiles adjacent to the tub.

As a result of the water damage signs, the inspector and the seller had to break and remove several tiles from the bathroom to further inspect the subflooring. What they found was a wet subflooring with moisture that had crept underneath the bathtub. Now, all of the subflooring needed to be replaced…this is not a simple fix! Bring on the contractors, city permits and inspectors.

To completely replace the subflooring, the entire tub and tiles needed to be removed and replaced. The total cost for this work was $4850!

The above scenario that I described above is not too uncommon whenever I see a bathtub that simply has shower curtains. Constant water dripping out from shower curtains eventually leads to some of the water penetrating past the tile caulking and under to the subflooring. A problem like this can be minimized and hopefully avoided by installing some shower doors. These doors do a much better job than curtains of keeping the water in the tub and not outside the tub. In addition to the shower doors, make sure to keep the areas around the tub dry and well caulked to prevent any water entering the subflooring. Simple techniques like this can prevent your subflooring from getting water damaged and causing you to spend the money thousands to fix it.

Chris Kamali is a TriValley Real Estate Agent, helping clients buy and sell homes in Dublin, Pleasanton, San Ramon and Livermore.