Has this ever happened to you? You're just about to leave work when your husband calls and says, "Make sure you go to the bathroom now because you might not be able to use it when you get home." My response? "Good thing I didn't drink that second bottle of water."
Yes, the new plumbing is well and truly underway. In fact, the two-member crew who have been working on it are super fast. They stayed until past 7 this evening finishing up the pipes and making sure that we could use the water tonight. A job that we thought would take three or four days minimum looks like it's going to take two, plus a couple of hours clean up. I must say, I feel very lucky how this turned out, considering the plumbing had been our biggest headache going into the remodel.
Darryl and I assumed, given the economy, that it would be easy to find contractors who wanted to work; we envisioned having a bidding war for the pleasure of making our house beautiful (lowest bidder wins!). However, finding a plumber proved quite difficult. The first three we called promised bids and then never called back. Another one sounded like a great match, but told us he was too busy and recommended someone else instead (who never called back). We even had someone come to the house, look the job over, go to his truck to work on the bid, and then drive off! It was getting to the point where I started to take it personally. So in the end we decided not to redo the whole house as originally planned. This wasn't ideal for several reasons. First, we didn't really want to match new plumbing with the old stuff. Second, since the foundation was exposed and the crawl space accessible, we thought it would be the perfect time to do this. And finally, and most importantly, we wanted to eliminate the twice yearly sewage-in-the-shower backup that always seemed to happen at 10pm after it was dark.
Then we learned, quite unexpectedly, that the company doing our solar panels also subcontracts plumbing and gave us a bid that worked for our budget. So we ended up re-piping the entire house all the way out to the street. Tonight we ran the shower three times, used the dishwasher, and did a load of laundry, just because we could! No one can ever say the Vinyards don't know how to have a good time.
Laura -I know those plumbing stories well.We have had full blown floods in the basement from backed up pipes. No details necessary. Glad you found a good plumber eventually and celebrated appropriately with the running of water ritual!
ReplyDeleteI love your writing style and I am enjoying vicarious remodeling through your blog! Thanks for sharing.
Gilly
Our original plan for the remodel was to add a basement to store all of our jams and pickles and onions. No one out here in Southern California has any idea what this actually is or why anyone would want one. It turns out that the cost for a basement was about half the cost of the entire remodel, so we nixed the idea. I'm jealous that you get to have one, even if it does flood!
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