House of Mysteries

Saturday was focused on plumbing. Two nice guys came at 9AM. They left at three o'clock after taking on two big jobs.

First they replaced all that cast iron in the basement with PVC. Here's a pretty cool before and after.



That scary collection of pipes under the half-bath, and the one we score-stuff-smashed are all bye bye now.

The white pipes above lead to the toilet in the half-bathroom and the kitchen sink, where the plumbers installed a new kitchen faucet. See our cheapola basin in the place of the concrete one we broke apart?

The plumbers told us lots of things, but a couple that stick out:

1) The cement board we laid in the half-bathroom on Friday was good for the tile, but it wouldn't strengthen the floor. They recommended 3/4-inch plywood screwed with deck screws into the subfloor. (We'll be implementing their suggestion today with any luck.)

2) For plumbing fixtures (like faucets), they told us to go to a plumbing supply shop. The fixtures look exactly the same as Home Depot fixtures, but all the fittings inside are brass whereas Home Depot's fixtures have plastic fittings. (Our kitchen faucet's water flow is not entirely cylindrical.)

We also ripped up the flooring in what will eventually be my bedroom closet, in order to re-do the shower/tub plumbing system in our upstairs bathroom.



They replaced the gasket (the circular piece) and the pipe leading away from it -- the white one. They weren't planning on replacing it, but we discovered a leak that had everyone baffled since we first inspected the place.

In the foyer downstairs, some of the popcorn ceiling had come down due to moisture. The moisture was caused by a slow leak, but we couldn't see the leak. Was it the toilet? The sink? The tub?

Apparently when the flooring in the closet was repaired, replaced or first installed, a nail had been driven into the lead pipe beneath...


... see the brown hole? Perhaps the pipe wasn't punctured, but over years, as the pipe corroded a little from the inside, eventually, there was a hole in a place that made no sense.

While he was sawing away at the floorboards, the plumber also accidentally nicked a pipe, due to an unexpected turn in the copper underneath the closet floor. This caused a pretty major (but brief, thankfully!) geyser in the closet and leak in the downstairs ceiling. Sigh....

Along with the double-wiring of outlets, we are solving the House of Mysteries.