And that about wraps it up for this "vacation"

We were originally intending to take the morning off yesterday and wander around downtown for a few hours, but when we got up and looked at our accomplishments thus far, decided to put in one last day of all-out work.

And ooh, boy! What a day it was...

It was while we were explaining our progress to friends over dinner on Friday night that we finally realized why this renovation has been so difficult to manage. It's because we're running two separate projects at the same time: the basement renovation on one end, and the perimeter drainage system on the other. In a way, this was preventing us from making significant progress on either one...

For example, the War Department spent most of the day on Friday (which was arguably the best weather day of the whole week) down in the basement rerouting an electrical circuit. While it's true that this circuit was in the way of the next wall we wanted to frame, and it had to be moved, it was extremely complicated, finicky, and above all, time-consuming. Meanwhile, I was outside, finishing off the hole on the west side, starting the hole in the driveway (yes in the driveway - more on that later), and taking the wire brush to the back wall in preparation for sealing. Amy didn't really want to be stuck downstairs, and I would rather have been framing (Have I ever mentioned how little I like digging? Really? That often? Huh. Well, never mind, then.) and we probably would have made more progress if we had been working together. As it was, we both made an impact on our respective tasks, but neither of us really felt like we had finished anything.

So, we decided on Saturday (or as I call it, Digurday) that we wanted to finish one of our projects. Given that the crappy weather had returned, leaving us with cloudy skies, a stiff breeze, and temperatures lower by about five degrees, we decided to tackle the remaining outside stuff. This required the following tasks:

• Widening the hole in the front yard to expose the connection between the house perimeter drain and the drain out to the city storm sewer.


• Cleaning off the rest of the back wall with the wire brush so we could apply the foundation sealer at some point this week.


• Digging down beside the house on the driveway side to expose the perimeter drain, much like we had done on the west side.

If you think that sounds like a lot of work, you'd be half-right. It's actually a full metric shit-ton of labour.

And we did it all.

Here's the hole in the front yard now:



Just a wee bit bigger, eh?

It's difficult to capture the cleanliness of the back wall (even with my awesomely spectacular camera - NOT), so I didn't try. Instead, here's a picture of the back wall before we cleaned it, showing the amount of crap that was on the wall and, as a bonus, one of Amy's nice little hydraulic cement patches in the footing:



And of course, the driveway hole. I actually started this bastard on Friday, figuring that once I got past the asphalt, it would be pretty much smooth sailing. After all, I had dug the hole on the west side, underneath the office window, without needing the pick at all. It was muddy as hell, thanks to the rain, but it wasn't especially rough going. And look, that hole is all done and ready for the drain cleaning guy:



That hole was peanuts compared to the sheer drudgery of the hole in the driveway, though. As it turned out, the asphalt was the easy part.

Here's how it looked when I quit for the day on Friday:



You can sort of see how it's going to be rough going, what with the rock wall right up against the downspout, and the hard edge of the asphalt at the side of the hole. But I don't think, even at that point, that I really had an idea of how tough the rest of it was going to be.

I now know with an awful certainty while they call it "hardpan". Because it's as hard as a fucking pan, that's why. They should call it you're-not-getting-through-this-without-ten-pounds-of-dynamite-pan.

Amy and I worked on this hole together for almost four hours. Every inch of dirt had to be laboriously chipped away using the pick, prybar, shovel, or crowbar. When we finally got close to the pipe, it got even worse because of the river rock embedded in the clay. I can't even begin to recount the swearing involved, seriously.

But if you were to walk up our driveway last night (at dusk, which is when I finally called it a day), you would see this:



If you were to get closer, and look down, you'd see this:



Without a doubt, THE most difficult hole I've ever had to dig. Bar none.

Speaking of which, it's time for another edition of...

The Injury Report

• Amy has this HUGE bruise on her shin, just above the ankle. We don't know what caused it exactly, but I'm making her wear jeans so people don't think I beat her up.


• When I was digging that bloody hole in the driveway, I over-estimated the length of the hole and bounced the pick off the rock wall of the garden. This caused the pick to turn in my hands and I smashed the back of my left hand into the edge of the asphalt. It really hurt. It hurt even more when I did the exact same thing with the next swing.


• I have a goose-egg on my left shin caused by the pick bouncing off the hardpan (also while digging the hole in the driveway) and the handle smashing into my shin. Thankfully, I only did that once.

Anyway, before I go and enjoy the last day of my vacation (we're taking the day off from renovations to do some housework, shopping, and lazing around), I should probably expand somewhat on the purchase I mentioned in the last post.

For those of you who weren't sure what it was or how it works, the item I bought is a laser level. Basically, you set it up, turn a little screw in the base of the unit, and it automatically levels itself, projecting a perfectly plumb/level line onto your work surface. The unit I bought will actually project a line on the floor, ceiling, and opposite wall at the same time, which makes it so invaluable when trying to frame a wall in our desperately unlevel basement.

A still picture doesn't really do it justice, but here's a shot of my new favorite tool in action. You'll just have to imagine the top of it spinning at about 8,000 rpm, and the tripod legs doing something that looks a lot like Riverdance while the laser lights strobe wildly around the room and Boney M's "Rasputin" plays at top volume:



Okay, it actually just kind of stands there quietly, but it's still pretty damn cool.





I think I need more coffee. Read more...

Our so-called vacation so far

I can’t decide whether to appreciate the fact that the weather over the past four days has been perfect for staying inside and working, or bemoan the fact that August this year feels more like November. It’s been cold and rainy since Friday, and the few times it’s been warm, it’s been ridiculously muggy.

On the plus side, we’ve managed to get quite a bit done.

Friday night we made our weekly pilgrimage out to Rona in Langford and picked up some more wood along with the interior doors we had ordered a month ago. Of course, they’d been sitting in storage since the first of the month, but nobody had bothered to call us and let us know they were there – despite their claims to the contrary. (I dunno. I mean, I really like that store – it’s clean, it’s Canadian, it has lots of stuff at good prices – but the people there are just so useless. They’re all so friendly and earnest and they seem to really WANT to be helpful, but they don’t seem to have a clue what they’re doing there, especially when it comes to their own systems.)

Saturday was something of a write-off, although not entirely. I think we were both just so relieved to finally make it to vacation that we spent most of the day ambling aimlessly around the house. Eventually we realized there was just no point in forcing it and called it a day after just a couple of hours of half-hearted effort. On the plus side, Shaun of the Dead was really funny.

Sunday was much better in terms of general productiveness. We finished framing the bathroom:



(looks almost like a room now, doesn’t it?) and started digging the hole for the cleanout on the west side of the house:



As much as I hate to admit it, digging that one wasn't all that bad. I didn't need to use the pick, thanks in large part to all the rain we've had. The relatively soft ground was a nice change - though, of course, I DID have to be careful not to hit the electrical cable we buried there last summer.

The War Department also started filling the crack in the rear wall with hydraulic cement:



That’s actually the accumulated effort of three days – she had to work up the wall in stages, putting in the cement for about a quarter of the crack, letting it dry, and then doing the next bit.

Monday was a bit of a catch-all. We made several trips out to various stores and suppliers, picking up yet more wood while we were at it. I did a little more digging, and Amy started trying to puzzle out the electrical situation. By the time we started working on framing the first wall of the Dread Wall of Pink, we were both pretty worn out and started to fray around the edges. And of course, the difficulties presented by the framing job didn't help one bit.

See, our house was built in 1946. That's 60 years of settling, shifting, and general wear and tear. The result is that the foundation walls aren't exactly true and plumb anymore - if in fact, they ever were. The floor is also not really level and, not to be left out, neither is the ceiling. What this means for our framing job is that we can't approach the task in the usual way: build the wall flat on the ground and then lift it into place - top plate, sill plate, studs, and all. Presenting an additional problem is the fact that we're trying to leave an air gap between the rigid foam insulation and the inside of the wall (which isn't plumb to begin with). And of course, there's a beam halfway down the length of the wall that we have to frame around, the wall isn't straight but we want the new wall to be, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Anyway, after about two hours of futzing about with this stinking thing, we called it a night. While I was having my traditional apres work beer, however, I had a brainstorm.

First thing Tuesday morning, I got up and went down to Rona and picked up one of these:



(Yay! New tool!) It was a little more expensive than I had planned, but as it turns out, it was exactly what we needed. Without further ado, the first studded wall against the Dread Wall of Pink:



Can't tell you how awesome it is to be doing constructive work...

Anyway, that's where we stand this morning. Sadly, errands will keep us from accomplishing much today (I gotta drive up Island), but we should be able to put in an hour or three after dinner. Read more...

Things that make you feel like a idiot...

So while Amy was out gallivanting around with her friends on Wednesday night, I took it upon myself to do some of the bracing in the stud walls for the bathroom. This involved little more than measuring the gap between the studs (which was fairly irregular because of all the corners, and actually not because we can't measure out 16" on centre), cutting a piece of 2x4 to length, and screwing it into place.

I gathered up all the necessary tools, got the chop saw set up and plugged in, put my tool belt on, and gathered up a whole whack of 2x4 bits that were left over from building the wall in the first place. I filled the little pocket of the tool belt with screws, put a fresh battery in the drill and set to work.

Which is right about when the stupidity started.

I cut the first piece a little short, but set it aside to use later. I cut a second piece too long, promptly trimmed it too short, and then set it aside to use later. I then cut a third piece, and it fit in quite nicely: not too tight, not too loose. (No, this isn't a reworking of the three bears; I'll do my best to explain this, just bear with me.) The problem really started when I tried to screw it in to the studs.

For some reason (because I'm an idiot), I was trying to attach the braces by toe-nailing (or toe-screwing, as the case may be) through the face of the brace (the thin side of the 2x4) and into the stud. This involved starting the screw perpendicular to the brace, getting it to bite the wood (but not TOO much), then turning the screw on a sharp angle and driving it through. I needed a third hand to hold the brace steady while conducting all these operations and couldn't for the life of me figure out why this was so hard.

Eventually, I rigged up a system where I would start the screws into the brace while it was still on the floor, and then use a piece of scrap wood to hold the back side of the brace square with the stud while I drove the rest of the screw through. I would then go around the wall and do the same with the other side. Once the brace was held on both ends, I would do the other two screws and move on to the next one.

Well, as you can imagine, this method worked to a degree, but not without a lot of false starts, stripped screws, and colourful language. But I persevered, and only had three braces left, when the sheer idiocy of my approach hit me. (Those of you who have done framing before have already spotted the flaw in my plan.)

You see, when you put a stud into a wall, you have to toenail the top and bottom of the stud because you don't have access to the other side of the footer and header (being already attached to the floor and ceiling). When you're doing the braces, however, you don't have that problem: you can drill straight through from one side of the stud and into the brace.

 

Needless to say, the last three braces went a lot faster...


Lesson learned: let Amy do the goddamn framing. I'm going out for beers. Read more...

Oh, the pain

You know, I could make this entire post about the bits of me that hurt right now, but it would take up a lot of screen space. Here's a short list: hands, feet, legs, arms, wrists, and back. Oh, jebus, my aching back...

But you didn't come to read another edition of the injury report (I also have a couple of nasty scrapes from where I unloaded the concrete mixer by myself because I'm an idiot), so on with the concrete show!

We started the day by realizing that we were late picking up the mixer, so I rushed off to get it while the War Department lazed about in bed with the cats. (Hey, I write the blog, so you get my version of events! I don't care that she was up and organizing the basement by the time I got back, I like my story better.) While Amy prepped the basement and got the hoses out, I set up the mixer in the side yard by the window:



If you're very quiet, you might be lucky enough to catch a very rare sighting of the War Department in her natural habitat...



Once everything was ready, we mixed up one bag of concrete with a whole bottle of the bonding agent into a thin slurry. (Am I the only one who loves that word? slurry... Seriously, that's a good word.) Then Amy painted the mixture onto all of the rough edges of the concrete while I farted about taking pictures and getting in the way. (That's what she's doing in the shot above.) We let the bonding agent dry a little bit, and then started mixing and pouring concrete. It was pretty much just a straight slog from that point, but here are some of the highlights:

• In the beginning, I brought 21 of the original 32 bags of concrete from the garage to the side yard, partly because I wasn't sure I'd need all 32 bags, partly because it was sort of overcast and I didn't want to move all those bags back into the garage if it started raining, and mostly because after 5 trips with the wheelbarrow, my arms were going to fall off.


• I started by mixing two bags at a time, emptying the concrete into buckets which I then passed through the window to Amy, who dumped them into the holes. She would start smoothing out and leveling the concrete while I mixed up the next batch. After a while, I kinda got the hang of it, and moved up to mixing three bags at a time.


• About halfway through the second hole, the big one on the workshop side of the bathroom wall, we realized that we weren't going to have enough concrete. Amy figured we'd need at least four more bags, and sent me off to Rona to get six more. When I got there, I figured I might as well play it safe and bought eight. We wound up using all of them, with not even a bucketful left over.


• We finished up about quarter-to-five, but by the time I had rinsed out the mixer and got it loaded in the back of the truck (ouch! again!), it was five-to. Amy called the rental place (we had to have the mixer back by 5:00 or pay for an extra day), but even though she said I was on my way and would be there in 10 minutes, the guy told her bluntly that they were closing in five minutes and hung up. Nice. So the mixer cost us $60+ instead of $30+, but you know what? It was worth every penny.


• Amy did all of the smoothing, troweling, and grading. I just ran the mixer, rinsed the concrete off the tools on a semi-regular basis, and did most of the heavy lifting.

All in all, it was a hell of a lot of work for one day. But we finished! We now have a basement floor - with no cat tracks! Imagine!

Here are a series of shots showing our work. The first of each pair shows the concrete after pouring, the second after letting it cure overnight (still not quite ready to walk on):










Look! No more hole to the outside!



Okay, so that's probably more pictures of concrete than you really wanted to see, but we're pretty proud of the job we did.

So on Sunday, we cleaned up most of the dirt and mud on the rest of the floor and tidied up the work bench. Amy patched most of the holes in the slab (and the giant hole left by the old water service in the side of the house) with hydraulic cement while I fixed the plumbing under the kitchen sink. Yes, I fixed the plumbing. (Yes, I left a bowl under the drain just in case I didn't fix it right and we haven't run the dishwasher yet, which will REALLY test it, but I'm pretty sure it's good.)

All in all, it was arguably the most work we've managed in a weekend so far. 40 fricking bags of concrete. Oh, my aching back.

Yes, we both took our Vitamin I and plenty of Vitamin Beer. Probably shouldn't have ground one up and dissolved it in the other, but what are ya gonna do? Read more...

It's concrete day!

All right, enough of the simpering about keys and kitty litter. It's picture time!

A warning to users on dial-up: ha ha!

First up, the plumbing inspection. Our poor beleaguered plumber booked the inspector for 2:45 on Thursday afternoon, and came over a little early to get everything set up. When the inspector arrived, and they filled up the system with water to test the seals, they found a leak in one of the connections between the crappy old cast iron pipe and the new PVC. The inspector, bless his cold, cold heart, said he had another job to inspect, but would come back in an hour or so to give the plumber a chance to fix things up.

Well, the plumber scurried around the basement for the better part of an hour, getting absolutely soaked and covered in mud (the contents of the pipes were under pressure for the test, and when he attempted to let the pressure off... well, let's just say it didn't release as smoothly as he planned). Fortunately, he was considerate enough to do the mud and water spraying outside, so the basement didn't get trashed again.

When the inspector came back, they went to conduct the test again, and the bladder they were using to plug one end of the drain wouldn't work. I don't know what was wrong with it (I was getting the play-by-play third hand as I was at work), but it wouldn't inflate properly to close off the drain. So he's running around trying to get it to work (getting more soaked in the process) and the inspector is RIGHT THERE... ah, it must have been a glorious scene.

Eventually, however, they managed to plug the drain, fill the system, and check for leaks. All good - we passed the rough plumbing inspection! W00ts! Of course, we also had to pay the piper - er, plumber - for all his hard work. The War Department handed over a cheque that was five bucks south of $4000. Um, ouch. Still, the guy worked his butt off, and we're pretty sure he STILL cut us a bit of a deal as far as the number of hours he actually put in.

At any rate, with the plumbing inspection completed, we have the green light to start covering up those damn holes in the floor. Which means... concrete!

We picked up 20 bags on Thursday night and stashed them in the garage for safekeeping. After work on Friday, I picked up a half-a-yard of washed sand. We used the sand to cushion and embed the pipes, and then covered them up with some of the better quality dirt and the rest of the sand. Did I mention that all of the sand and dirt had to be passed in through the window in buckets?

Here's the result:




(Ha ha, cats can't get out the hole!)

After we were finished that, I went back to Rona and picked up another 12 bags of concrete. Of course, my back and arms started to stiffen up on the drive, so loading 12 bags really, really hurt. When all was done:



That is 32 bags of Sakrete Concrete Mix, and we're hoping it will be enough. We had to get it in two trips, because we didn't want to find out that the truck couldn't handle 1760 pounds of crap while coming back on the highway at 90kph. Oh, and by the way: picking up and putting down 32 bags of concrete means more than two "Vitamin I". I'm just saying.

All in all, it was a hell of a lot of work for a Friday night. It's worth it though: no more enormous piles of dirt in the basement:



The plan for today: pick up the concrete mixer (what? you think we're mixing 32 bags of concrete in a wheelbarrow? HA!) at 10, clean and prep the holes, and start laying concrete. Oh, joy. If I don't post pictures tonight, I'm probably stuck in the foundation.

Fortunately, Amy's done a fair amount of concrete work in her time, so once again, she'll be in charge while I do all the heavy lifting.

One last picture before I go get started:



Ah, my favorite hole. Want to know the best part? We can't fill it in yet! We have to make it BIGGER!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ahem.

Sorry about that. Anyway, we need to dig down some more on the right side there to expose the drain tile - that's where it connects to the pipe that runs through the front yard and out to the city storm drain. We have to expose it so we can install a clean out. Joy.

I'm going to need more coffee today. I can feel it already. Read more...

A merry little diversion

So, not a lot of progress in the grand scheme of things today. The plumber couldn't book the inspection until tomorrow, and we still haven't heard from the hardware store about our doors, though they were supposed to have arrived today.

However, we did manage to complete ONE task successfully...

A while ago, I noticed that I couldn't find one of my key rings. It wasn't a particularly large key ring, as it held only a copy of the War Department's truck key, and a key to the padlocks on the garage and garden shed. (I keep the keys I use everyday on a separate ring, which is probably a good thing.) I figured it would turn up sooner or later, and merely used the War Department's keys whenever I needed to drive the truck or gain access to the garage.

Well, around about Sunday morning, we started to think about it and realized that neither of us had seen my spare keys in at least a couple of weeks. Given that copies of the truck key are rather expensive, we figured we should make an all out effort to find my wayward set.

We cleaned pretty much the entire house on Sunday, scouring the place from top to bottom as we searched for my stupid keys. At one point, I thought that it might, just maybe, be possible that I had thrown them out accidentally. I had worn a rather sizable hole in a pair of work jeans, and tossed them into a big black garbage bag after a long day of digging (what else?). If they weren't anywhere in the house, they could conceivable be in the pocket of the jeans. Of course, I had later used that garbage bag as a receptacle for the contents of the litter boxes, and was fairly certain that bag was well on its way to the landfill.

Not really wanting to entertain the possibility that I was stupid enough to have thrown out a pair of jeans without emptying the pockets first (let alone divesting them of such a precious cargo as keys), I started by opening and rummaging through every one of the eighteen (slight exaggeration) toolboxes scattered through the garage and basement. No luck.

I then turned my attention to the workbench (pictured here previously), and tidied up every jar of junk, every loose tool, every half roll of tape. No sign of the keys.

We vaccuumed, dusted, scrubbed, and washed every flat or vertical surface upstairs, and followed it with a close, flashlight-assisted investigation of every hollow, nook, and cranny under all the furniture. No keys.

We kept up the search, rather half-heartedly, over the next three days, moving the odd bit of furniture, dashing off to search an area that we thought we might have forgotten, and generally starting to think about writing the whole endeavour off as a bad deal and heading down to the car dealership to get another key cut.

Well, as I was farting around outside with the angle grinder tonight, I noticed a big black garbage bag full of construction debris and other detritus from the renovations. Wondering if perhaps my recollecting of engulfing the old jeans in kitty litter was mistaken, I worked open the knot and poked about in the garbage. Sadly, there was no sign of my old jeans (though I did find an old pair of shoes and some of the War Department's discarded clothing). Tying up the bag again, I started thinking. I was pretty sure I HAD dumped kitty litter over the old jeans. I was also pretty sure I had moved a bag full of kitty litter out of our garbage cans over the weekend in order to clean out the cans. I was also reasonabbly sure that I had stashed the bag in the empty garbage cans of the house next door, whose occupants had moved out some weeks ago and whose landlord had not yet rented it.

Well, in the neighbour's garbage can, underneath a pair of old pizza boxes (hey, you try digging for four days and see if YOU still feel like cooking) was a big black garbage bag.

I poked it experimentally. Yep. Feels like kitty litter.

I squeezed one of the bulges. Hmmm. Feels a bit like cloth.

I worked the knot loose and, holding my breath, peered inside. Yep. Kitty litter and an old pair of jeans.

Gingerly, I pulled up on the corner of the jeans (and thanked my lucky stars that it was the waistband). I stuck my hand in the first pocket.

I really shouldn't have done that.

I pulled the pocket open and peered inside. Kitty litter. I pulled open the next pocket and peered inside. Kitty litter. Same with the next pocket.

With one pocket left to go, I didn't like my chances. But nevertheless, I pulled open the pocket and peered inside. Kitty litter.

And a set of rather dirty keys.








In my defence, I was really tired when I threw out those pants. I mean, REALLY tired. Read more...

All right, already!

Geez, I had no idea people were actually reading this. And what's more, they get antsy if I don't update!

Weekend developments:

• We had the initial plumbing inspection on Friday. I say initial because the inspector decided to be an ass and told our plumber that he would have to redo the venting for the shower and hot water tank drains. Final (hopefully) inspection should be sometime tomorrow, and then we can start filling in the enormous holes in our basement.


• Speaking of our plumber, he had some trouble trying to connect to the badly corroded sanitary sewer drain and had to excavate yet another massive trench in the basement floor:
  
  
  
  
  That's looking along the sewer line, under the wall of the foundation, through the footing, and into that enormous hole in the front yard which, yes, STILL wasn't big enough. You can see that we now have a ladder in the hole so we can actually get in and out of it. (Quickly. If a wasp comes.) The good news is that it's all nice, new, sturdy, properly-sealed plastic pipe now, so we don't have to worry about the cast iron corroding under the foundation anymore. Well, not as much, anyway.


• The inspector said the new water service was fine, so we went and picked up a half a yard of sand, shoveled it carefully into the bottom of the trench to cushion the pipe, and then filled in the trench with some of the crappy soil from the huge pile of crappy soil in the back yard. This is the result:
  
  
  
  Notice how we carefully let the grass assume the same color brown as the clay so that the trench wouldn't be as noticeable? Wasn't that clever? (Okay, maybe it's because my camera is so shitty that it can only display 256 colors, but still.)
  
  I can't even begin to express how excited I was to be doing something that went towards repairing part of the house rather than tearing yet another hole in it. Stupid holes. Stupid, stupid holes


• The kitchen sink/garbage disposal is leaking. Upstairs. Sigh. The War Department is going to give fixing that ourselves a try. The plumber is already warning us about the "shock value" in his upcoming bill...

Read more...

Enough with the holes

Well, there's more to the story of the hole, but I'm sure you've all had enough pictures of excavated clay to leave you with a serious depression. No need to furrow your brows, I just don't want this blog to fall into a rut or become too much of a niche thing. So at the risk of causing a rift between readers who like the apertures, and readers who prefer a little less orifice with their reading, we'll move on. (You should know better than to leave me an opening, Dad...)

Speaking of perforations (yok yok yok), we had a bit of a mishap with one of the existing pipes. Back when the plumber was jack-hammering the concrete and pounding away at the foundation, the drain from the kitchen sink/garbage disposal starting leaking. Of course, said drain connects to the main drain, into which the toilet empties. I guess what I'm getting at is that we had rather stinky water dripping into a bucket by the laundry sink for almost a week until the plumber could get around to repairing it.

Yesterday was the day, and after he had finished enlarging that bloody hole in the front yet again (no, I'm not posting a picture of it; you can wait until the clean out has been installed) he started taking apart the drain so he could fix it.

Well, as he put it to us later, the War Department and I "need to start using the garburator properly". Turns out the whole pipe was full (and I mean, FULL - we have no idea how the water even drained out of the sink at all, it was that plugged) of old, stinky vegetable matter. The end result of this was that our plumber found himself attempting to hold up one end of a pipe that weighed about twenty pounds more than he had expected while attempting to cut through the other end.

The balancing act ended badly.

After he'd cleaned up the water and crud that had burst over the basement, he cut off the top of the main stack, cut through the old cast iron pipe of the toilet drain (have I mentioned how happy we are to not have been at home for any of this?), and replaced it all with shiny new plastic drain pipe. I have no good "before" picture, but the aftermath looks like this, with pretty much everything between the two silver bands new material:



I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the guy does nice work.

On looking over the past few posts, I have noticed one rather serious omission. It occurs to me that perhaps the best way to convey just how much digging we've done would not be to show you pictures of holes, but to show you how much dirt we've had to move:



It hurts just looking at it. Read more...

The hole, the hole, it haunts me so...

I would have posted this update earlier, but I couldn't make my arms work. Stupid digging.

So, the plumber came and looked at our hole. He was not impressed, and so we dug some more. Then we sprayed the hole with water to soften the clay.

Note to self: water does not soak into clay.

Anyway, this is what we see now (click to enlarge):



And because the pictures still don't really do it justice, here's me standing in the hole:




On the plus side, the plumber ran the new 3/4" water service in from the street, and has all kinds of new water pipes installed in the soon-to-be-bathroom. If we can get the hole done tonight, he reckons he should be able to call for the inspector by the end of the week.

Ah, what the hell, one more picture. Here's where the new water service enters the house:



A couple of things to note about that picture: first, the War Department did all of the digging for that herself; second, that picture shows how close to the surface our previous water service entered the house, and is a pretty clear indication of why one of our "winterization" procedures was to heap a big mound of soil over that part of the flower bed. Oh, and note the size difference between the pipes. We can already feel the difference in the water pressure. Read more...