plumbing fiasco, day 3.

So, the plumbing was supposed to be finished on Friday, but when I drove past the house at 5pm, there were still 3 big trucks in the driveway. I got to Keith’s parents’ house and he was there and said that when he drove by (before me) there were no trucks, just a man. So we let the dogs out and decided to drive over to Lowe’s while we waited. Well, we drove back past our house and everyone was gone. So we went in and took a peek.

uhhh

The first thing we see when we walk in is this little half-wall and we still are not 100% on where it came from. It might have been holding up the desk in the little office? I really have no idea.

random holes
To the left, the random little holes are filled.

exercise room

exercise room
Big giant hole in the exercise room is gone.

one of these things does not belong.
And the toilet and vanity have returned. Not to their normal/usable space…but at least they are there.

bathroom
And the bathroom…

little office
And the little office…

the hole
And the hole.

in little office, toward exercise room

I jokingly told Keith we should write our names in the cement and now I regret not doing it.

Since everything was still pretty wet, we decided to just spend another night at his parents’ house and come home in the morning.

We went to Lowe’s and considered our options for the floors. We had mostly decided on going with a laminate, but were told there would be about a 30 day wait on the installation. And moments later, Keith gets a call from the plumber informing us that everything is done and oh yea, cement takes about 30 days to cure.

Sooo lovely. We made an appointment anyways to have someone come out and measure, just so we can start pricing things out. And actually by this morning I am sort of leaning toward no laminate and just getting some carpet. We had originally wanted laminate so that we could have some sort of cohesive flooring situation down there, but we can’t have laminate in the bathroom, we most likely cannot have it near the furnace, we don’t want to rip up the game room’s carpet, we wanted to wait on doing anything in the office, Keith wants some sort of rubber mat in the exercise room…so that would mean there was still 4-5 different floors down there. So I am leaning toward some kind of carpet. We also are toying around with the idea of knocking down a few walls…

This project has gone from little to gigantic and it is pretty stressful.  We don’t really HAVE to do anything but get a bathroom floor down…but if we want to expand the bathroom, there is no sense in putting a floor down first.  Ahhhhhhhh.

Keith has to talk to the insurance adjuster tomorrow so he had offered to give us some recommendations on people to go with, so hopefully he can recommend a contractor that we can come by and just give us some sort of estimate.

Again, so thankful all this crap is just in the basement. We still have a fully functional house…it’s just really annoying.

plumbing fiasco, day 2.

So Thursday was day 2. I snuck down in the morning to take pictures as I stated before. They were actually gone by the time I passed Thursday evening, so I got to go in and take my Day 2 pictures. Keith had gotten a call Thursday, that instead of finishing Friday like they thought, it would take until Monday.

I was not really surprised. Three days in and out seemed way too good to be true.

So we walked into the house Thursday evening and were immediately hit by the horrible smell of PVC pipe. Oh man, it was awful. Chemically and overpowering.

Walking into the office now looked like this:

into the office

Everything behind plastic, thick muddy plastic on the floor, countertops gone for good, sink and vanity…where did you go? No, really, where did you go. I don’t remember seeing you.

exercise room

Ooohhh look at that shiny white pipe!
anybody need any rocks?

Anybody need any rocks? I guess I didn’t expect them to fill the holes with concrete, but I was kind of surprised to see a big ol’ pile of rocks in my basement.

bathroom

More pretty white pipes!

crappy old tub.

Just realized that pipes are going a different direction now. Weird. Also a shot of the crappy tub. Apparently we are getting a new toilet because it would be more work to replace the old one? (Um, okay, sounds good to me!) I wish they would have broken the tub or something and replaced that. We’ll have to replace it ourselves one day.

the little office. slatted door leads to gameroom, folding door to "the hole"

The little office.

in "the hole"

The hole. A little more pipe rearranging here.

standing near "the hole" looking toward the office

Looking back toward the office. Nice new pipe!

standing at the edge of the little office, looking toward the office.

Pretty. (You know you are far too in love with your house when you can see the beauty in new PVC pipe.)

So later that night, Keith got a phone call and the guy said he was back on the original timeline and they should be done today!

Except the toilet and the sink can’t be replaced until we get some sort of flooring in the bathroom. We were going to try to wait on putting down any flooring in the basement since we still aren’t sure which direction we are taking it. There is a lot of awkward space down there that could be better utlized in other ways. We had talked about expanding the bathroom (by using the little office) and putting some closets in there for Keith (since he gets ready in the basement).

So it doesn’t make a lot of sense to pour lots of money into flooring when we might want to rearrange everything. But at the same time, apparently we can’t just make do with concrete floors/rugs for the time being. So this weekend we are going to go price some things out and figure out if maybe there is a happy medium.

 

plumbing fiasco, day 1.

So Wednesday was the day! Since I don’t think I ever shared pictures of the basement and it is a total labrynth, I drew a little diagram. On an adorable post-it.

basement diagram

So, we thought the areas to be affected would be the bathroom (obvs), the exercise room and maybe the little area in front of the shelves. Haaaaaaaaa.

Keith texted me at some point in the morning that the project was going to be a lot more involved than they expected. Which is just a wonderful thing to hear.

I stopped at home Wednesday night to get the mail and was greeted by the sound of jack hammers and this sight:

hey fellas

You can hardly see, but the left truck was FULL of broken up concrete/dirt. I had originally planned to go in and take pictures, but obviously couldn’t do that with them still there. Keith stopped by a few minutes after I left and went inside He later informed me that it was wayyyy worse than expected. I decided I would sneak down Thursday morning before they got there and take pictures.  So that’s what I did.

walking into the office, day 1
This was the view that greeted me once I opened the door. Encouraging already, right?

office, day 1. hello little sink. and counters

Once I peeled away some plastic, I was greeted by this in this office. Hello, sink and vanity! You do not belong here. Those are countertops to the left and right. 2/3 of them Keith ripped out of the exercise room and were just stashed in the little office til we could get rid of them. The other one was from the little office and the plumbers had to rip it out. I wanted it out of there anyway, so I was not the least bit disappointed by this. And Keith asked them to just throw it all away and they agreed, so that was a huge bonus since the other two had been sitting there for months (too big for either of our cars).

exercise room

And then here she is. Lovely. And another angle to show the enormity of the hole.

exercise room

Yikes.

old carpets/old toilet

The rest of the exercise room. Old nasty carpets and old toilet. It was indoor/outdoor carpet and it sucked. I hate green and it shows EVERY single dog hair. They told Keith they were going to put it back, but he told them just to throw it out. You can also see the lovely state of the walls down there. That white strip is where Keith ripped the desk out. There is some sort of burlap glued to all the walls, but of course they put it on after the desk, not before. Another old house surprise.

bathroom

And then here we are looking at the bathroom. That giant rectangle leads to the tub.

bathroom

A better bathroom shot. Pretty horrible. Just to the left of the blue blanket, you can see a cracked pipe.

 little office looking toward "the hole"

This shot is of the little office, I am standing where the old desk was ripped out. Through that folding door is what we call “the hole” and you can see they dug all the way into there.

"the hole"

Closer shot of the hole. This is where the other two bathrooms connect to the main line.

standing in little office, looking toward office

And then the view once I turned around, looking back toward the office.

standing in little office, looking at exercise room

And a better shot of how that trench connects to the giant exercise room hole.

holes under shelves

And then two little holes under the shelves, these must have been their initial holes before they realized which direction the problem was.

to be continued….