Today, we got back to business in the bathroom. Well, it used to be a bathroom, anyway. Now its not much of an anything room. Dad turned up around 8:30 and we set to work making assessments for ripping out the bathroom walls and fixtures. The first thing we discovered in our plumbing survey is that there was no shut-off valve on the pipes leading to the bathroom. Upstairs there was a shut-off valve for the toilet, and one under the sink (but only for the hot water, nothing for the cold), and the shower had no shut-off valves at all. The only way to work on the plumbing in the shower or the cold water in the sink would be to turn the water off to the entire house. I'm telling you, there were some really bright folks working on this house.
So, first things first we had to plumb in new shut-off valves in the basement. Or, I really ought to say that Dad had to plumb them in since he's the only one of us with any real plumbing experience or know-how. Right away when he started with the solder we could tell something wasn't right, though, since the solder didn't seem to draw into the fitting like it should. He kept heating and adding solder but it just dripped off onto the floor. But, we thought we would test it to be sure, so we turned the water back on to see how bad it was leaking. Well, it wasn't just a leak--the whole valve blew right off the end of the pipe and went flying across the basement on a blast of water. Much swearing and foul language was to be heard at this point.
We turned off the water and broke for lunch.
Take two: Andrew runs to the hardware store for soldering paste. That gets slapped on, and the valves are resoldered. I turn the water back on, we check for leaks, and now the solder doesn't leak but the drain gaskets drip. Probably they got overheated with all the soldering and now they don't hold quite right. Finally we get those drips stopped and I turn the water open all the way. But with the increased pressure, a new leak appears in one of the joints! ack. But, after one more go with the solder the leak was stopped up and we could finally shut the water off to the bathroom.
In the next act, we rip out the walls. And the sink, vanity, light fixture, and toilet. And we make the most incredible mess. Mortar dust is EVERYWHERE. The entire bathtub is filled with debris. But the really fun moment was as I was coming back in from hauling out the sink, I open the hallway door and suddenly see a geyser of water blasting out from the wall across the bathroom! Dad and Andrew got so carried away ripping things out that they forgot that the valve under the sink was the shut-off valve for the hot water! So I had to race to the basement to turn off the water again. Oh, the unbelievable mess. We thought it was a mess before... then we added water to the mortar dust and chips and made mud. Although it did settle the dust in the air a bit.
Anyway, we stopped around 5:00 after hauling out bag after bag of debris and cleaning up the floors a bit. We've more demolition to do tomorrow, so there's not much point in doing a serious cleaning up right now. But tomorrow sometime the demolition should be done and we can start on reconstruction. We hope.
Here's the most recent photos:
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