Hole-y cow!

Yeah, I know. It's a terrible title for this post, but I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it. I should write something deeper. Something, dare I say, wholesome.

At any rate, here's what our soon-to-be bathroom looked like when I left for work this morning:

Bathroom floor:


Workshop floor:


And this is what it looked like when I got home:

Bathroom floor:


Workshop floor:


Our plumber's a pretty laconic, laid-back kinda guy, not really given to over-expressing himself. When the War Department asked him how it was going, he said, "I've seen softer concrete..."

He busted his freaking ASS today.

Just for fun (and to drive home the point that no part of this reno will ever go as planned), it seems that the guys who laid the foundation 60 years ago didn't do the best job of levelling the grade. This explains the cracks in the pad of the foundation, and probably goes a long way toward explaining the massive crack in the wall, too. You can see the effect of this in the pictures above: it's the gap between the dirt under the foundation and the bottom of the concrete.

And of course, said lack of attention to detail means more work for us. We're going to have to use some of the enormous mound of dirt in the backyard to stop up the gaps - at least around the now open areas - before the inspector shows up to check the plumbing. Oh, joy. More digging.

We weren't exactly idle ourselves this evening. To help out our poor, beleaguered plumber, we opened up the wall upstairs so he would have a place to run a vent stack for the new bathroom.

Once again, a little before and after for you:

When I got home:


Just before I sat down to write this post:


No, we didn't paint the wall before we cut away the drywall. Yes, I know it looks like a different wall. I seem to remember mentioning that my camera was a piece of shit, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, you didn't believe me.

Well, it is. So there.