Gonna have to dip into emergency fund (first time ever) or drain basically all of my sinking funds. Feeling Nervous.

I recently found I'm going to have to deal with a costly home repair. It's entirely the fault of the person who owned the house before me and I'm livid but that's for a different post.

The bottom line is that I'm going to spend at least $7000 fixing it. I can either dip into my emergency fund and just cover it or I can drain my vacation, new car and home maintenance funds to pay.

Which strategy would you choose? When people have gone into their emergency funds, what is the philosophy about how quickly you need to refill them? I would of course fill it as fast as I could but it is hard to know what that actually means especially given that my car is pretty old.

I'm kinda feeling like it's 6 of one, half a dozen of the other but I'm not sure if I'm thinking about it wisely.