days 3 through 5: plumbing + drywall

No post yesterday because Flickr was behaving badly. At any rate, we are proceeding apace, even if the results are less visually impressive than last weekend's endeavours.

(Not that I'm not grateful. Plumbing may not be impressive visually, but it's oh-so-important in a working bathroom. Which — by the by — we do not yet have, but it's a dream of mine.)

We lost about half a day in there because they cracked the drain pipe and it had to be repaired. This means that the toilet had to be taken out early, and the floor ripped up. Which is good, because now we get to replace the part of the floor that was rotted. (I assume we would have replaced it at any rate, but at least now we know.)

The offending drain pipe.

Yes, this has a great deal to do with the non-working-ness of the bathroom. The toilet has been put back on, though. That turned out to be a priority, probably because my father-in-law has been living in the house this past week and infinitely prefers indoor plumbing to the alternative.


The master bedroom now has a ceiling. I believe it even has drywall, at this point. And yes, it also has a fireplace. Decadent, I know. It doesn't work, though. The previous owner jammed a block of foam up the chimney. No joke. She did it on purpose.


They rented a lifter from Home Depot to drywall the ceilings. This strikes me as so eminently practical and normal that I'm kind of wondering why they used a sawhorse to stand on when installing the insulation.


They have started removing the icky carpet in the den. In the previous owner's defense, we made it icky by taking out a wall right next to it, and then using the room as a demo dump for a while. It's kind of hard to recover from that.

You'll note that the carpet was apparently installed without an underpad, and directly on top of hardwood. Why? Because the seller's son probably "installed" it himself. I told you that that was going to recur.

Also, please note the new wall of the bathroom (which is about a foot removed from the old wall of the bathroom) and — exciting! — the presence of a proper GFI plug in the bathroom. I know! IN THE BATHROOM! It's like we don't want to be electrocuted or something.

So that is where things stand. Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for the time table, today and tomorrow are rest days because we have other, previously-planned things to do. We pick up again this weekend — the new ceilings and walls have to be mudded (yay?), and the first floor walls spackled and then painted. At least that's the plan. We shall see.

Before I end off, though, here's the most important picture so far:


Yes, that is a giant BAG OF COOKIES.

It turns out that, not only does Peak Freans have a factory outlet where they sell giant bags of cookies, but it also exists right near the closest Home Depot to our house. Pierre made an initial reconnaisance mission, and now we shall never go hungry for cookies again.

I am so moving to the right neighbourhood.