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...