Angela Law

One phrase describes today and that is “plumbing disaster”. Of course the way plumbing projects usually go around here, I’m probably being redundant with my phrasing. Actually things went pretty well up to a point–all of Brian’s soldered joints worked, so that was definitely a plus. When he turned on the water, one joint was leaking and it was a threaded one. The problem is that something was soldered to the piece connected to the thread, so it could not be tightened.

He took the section of pipe out and then tried to resolder it, but there was water in the lines that we could not get out (for those of you not versed in plumbing, this is a losing proposition). So, we decided to take a different approach and went to the dreaded WalMart to try to find some new parts. They had no copper fittings whatsoever, but I did see a canister of MAPP gas. Brian always uses propane. I read about MAPP gas the last time he had problems soldering something. I tried to find some at Lowe’s, but couldn’t, so we just stuck with the propane. As it turns out, MAPP gas totally kicks ass. I should add that for three hours, Brian tried to resolder the pipes with propane. After we got the MAPP gas, it took five minutes to resolder the same pipe. That is some good stuff.

Anyway, we turned the water back on again and there was a small leak around the other threaded pipe (do you see a theme here?). To top things off, only hot water is coming through the spigot at the moment. We’re hoping it has something to do with the bread we stuffed in the pipe while trying to resolder. With any luck, it will dissolve overnight and everything will be in working order in the morning. The leak seems to have stopped as well, though things like that make me nervous. We’ll see how that’s working in the morning, too.

Hail Mary, full of grace…

Get used to it. I suspect you’ll be reading these posts until the end of October.

Today wasn’t as productive as I’d hoped. Of course, I’m always way too hopeful about getting stuff done. Plus, we slept in this morning, so we got a later start than we should have. But, we were both beat from the previous two days’ work so neither of us set an alarm last night.

I worked on the walls for a bit–patching the plaster and some of the holes. My work is not done yet–we have to put in some new drywall around the tub and where the medicine cabinet used to be. Not quite sure when that’s going to happen. And I know we’re going to have to cut some holes into the wall for the electrical aspects of the project–those wires have to get through some how. To top things off, I’m going to have to texture paint the room before I paint it. There’s no other way for me to get the walls looking presentable since they used to have tile on them and are all bumpy from the adhesive. I had good success with this when we remodeled our kitchen five years ago, but I do not like to texture paint. It makes an incredible mess. Every time I do it, I swear it’s the last time. My only consolation is that the bathroom is very small.

Brian spent the day getting the new bathroom fixtures ready to install (no small task). This involved much soldering of pipes, and elbows, and sleeves. (oh my!) I was hoping he’d get them installed today, but we ran out of time. Cutting off the water supply is not something that you want to do at 6pm. So, this is the first thing on tomorrow’s agenda.

Today went so-so. Brian had an appointment to go to in the late morning, so we didn’t really get started until late afternoon. And by started, I mean we mostly pondered how to accomplish certain tasks that need to be done. We also managed to finish up the tub stuff that wasn’t completed yesterday.

After supper, we started on the “real” work of the day–installing the concrete backer board for the ceramic tile. We both felt that we needed to accomplish something today and this was just the thing because now we can install the tile whenever we want. This is good because after the tile is installed, we can hook up the new toilet. Having to go up or down a floor in order to use the restroom is not very convenient (especially in the middle of the night and when a five year old boy is involved). So, the sooner the better.

Today started the remodel of our main bathroom. Brian and I are off work for about the next week so we can work on this project. Being the only bathroom in the house with bathing facilities, this required that we accomplish a few things today–namely installing the new tub.

We started working at 9am this morning. Jake, surprisingly, was a big help this morning (don’t worry–he was a total pain in the ass the rest of the day so he made up for it). I guess anything that involves destruction, he’s into. He helped us remove the (pink) ceramic tile from the walls. He almost did one wall himself! Just before Jake had to leave for school, Brian started to work on the removal of our cast iron tub. The way you remove a cast iron tub is with a sledge hammer, by the way. This took about an hour. We got the truck all loaded up and Brian was off to the dump and to the lumber store to pick up some maple for the vanity he was supposed to have done by now.

While he was gone, I did some clean-up work. When Brian returned, he noticed that we forgot to remove the cabinet above the toilet. Luckily, everything below “eye level” was taken care of. I guess the cabinet will be removed of tomorrow. Good thing we have a shed to store our “garbage” in.

Next, we started on the tub installation. Of course, nothing ever goes how you want. We had to remove some of the plaster from the tub area in order to squeeze the tub in. No big deal because the tub surround is going to cover that area so it won’t take much effort to fix. It did take much effort to install, though. After that came the drain plumbing. You’d think this would be easy, but it’s not. We got the plumbing to work well enough so that we could all bathe this evening, but it still needs some work tomorrow.

If nothing else, all traces of pink have finally been removed from my house. We’ll call it a winner.