Weekend Work

If you've spent any time here in the past, you know I put a fair amount of photos in my posts. So I'll warn you before you go any further that the photos in this post are absolutely nasty (and embarrassing but whatever).

Apparently the house has had plumbing issues for some time but we were never made aware of them by the previous tenants. Sick and tired of taking a shower while standing in 4 inches of water that had accumulated just since turning the shower on... we decided to do something about it this past weekend.

We debated on whether to get a snake and try to unclog the pipes or just replace the almost 70 year old cast iron pipes with PVC. We chose the latter and off C went into our crawlspace which is actually quite roomy.

This is what he found.

That nastiness is a mixture of hair, rust, gunk and I don't really want to think about what else. The white pipe at the top of that photo would be someone's attempt at updating things. If only they had carried that idea all the way down. It was simply inserted into the larger cast iron pipe below it and not sealed in any sort of way. Therefore once the drain pipe was clogged everything that went in after it was overflowing into the crawlspace (hey, I warned you).

But we got that all fixed up and I got the tub nice and sparkling again (ever tried to clean a tube that doesn't drain?) and it was on to the bathroom sink.

In order to get to the pipe we had to remove some of the tile. Some genius decided to install the tile using liquid nails so we had to shatter them to get them off. A perfect excuse to remove the rest of the tile that goes halfway up the walls, all the way around the bathroom. Added to the project list... check.

We also discovered that at some point, this bathroom was painted pink... I know, almost as bad as the pipes.

What we found in the sink pipe wasn't much better.

(This is after he cut it so about 6 inches below the sink.)

We ended up having to replace that pipe almost all the way to the point where it joins the other drain pipes and goes towards the sewer.

Once we got the sink and cabinet out of there, I couldn't put it back. We had so much room without it. And the storage space isn't an issue because the linen closet is way oversized. We found a suitable pedestal replacement at Lowe's for just $44.

Maybe this weekend we'll get to the kitchen sink... which hopefully is just a broken disposal (but we aren't counting on that).