[RR] Plumbing

[dperich]

8 years ago, I was looking at the bathroom floor and found a puddle behind the wall beside the tub—the wall at the end of the tub with the faucets in it. I took out the removable panel to gain access to the plumbing and found dripping water and black mold.  The floor was rotting too.  I tried to wipe off the copper pipe and one of the sweated joints started spraying a fine mist.  The floor under my feet felt spongy (uh-oh).  I found that the drywall was disintegrating as well.    Time to replace the wall.   I knocked out the soft, damp, cakey drywall and found that whoever plumbed my house didn’t know what they were doing.  Two of the joints came apart like corks out of a bottle.  I figured that I better take a look under the linoleum.   I lifted it up.  The plywood floor under it had delaminated. I started picking up leaves of wood.  I figured it would be ok once I got to the sub-floor.  Next thing I knew, I was looking through to the downstairs bathroom.  (the downstairs bathroom was a half-bath and had an unfinished ceiling—bare joists and low furnace ducting that would make a tall person duck…or say “ouch!”.)   Time to replace the floor.   All the fixtures have to come out.  My wife, Paula, says the toilet really is in the wrong place.  There’s lots of useless space on either side of it and the traffic areas of the bathroom are squeezed.    Time to re-design the floor plan.   Somehow, we came up with the idea of a big cultured marble tub with a seat built into one side.  It would go where the old toilet was.  The new toilet would go where the old tub wall was and there would be space left over for a fancy corner linen closet.  There was enough room for a much wider sink counter also.  (The original builder, who went bankrupt building our house, was as bad of a floor planner as he was a plumber.)  Besides, I had to replace the floor and the plumbing anyway, might as well re-arrange the “furniture.”  I found two more soldered joints that just popped apart, a “repaired” joint that had copper sheeting wrapped around with gobs of solder in between, and several places where the joist behind the solder was charred an eighth inch deep.  I also found black rubber extension cord wire running inside the wall from a switch to a wall-mounted lamp fixture.   Time to re-wire the house.   Lord, please help me!     Now, eight years later, we have a much nicer bathroom upstairs, got new wiring and a fancy breaker box instead of the old fuse box too, the ceiling ducts downstairs have been replaced with wider, flatter ones that can be mounted tight against the joists instead of being suspended below poorly routed drain plumbing that zig-zagged under the floor joists.  The wider ducts pretty much fill the ceiling now and the bare joists above are only visible for a two foot span next to the cinderblock wall.  The trauma of 8 years earlier has dulled.  I’m thinking I could remodel this bathroom with some help from my bro-in-law, Glen.  Besides, the Lord had toughened me up for this project.  I’m experienced now… sort of.   The downstairs bathroom was as poorly laid out as upstairs.  The shower sunken into the concrete floor was 4’ long but only 2’ wide.  When the shower is running, the draft sucks the shower curtain halfway across the shower floor.  The toilet’s in an odd location.  When sitting on the throne, one knee is wedged against the brick chimney.  The sink is the shortest (front edge-to-backsplash) that we could find. There’s only about 18” in front of it before you back into the 6” deep shower well.  Then, like the upstairs used to be, there’s the other end of the bathroom with lots of unused space.    I’d rather move an 800# piano up three flights of stairs than move a room full of bathroom fixtures around that are mounted to and plumbed into a concrete floor.     But, I can do it, Lord!  Though It’s I frightening project, I seem to have some faith in completing this that was completely absent the last time.   …The rest of the story is coming…   -Cdr. Dave Perich