I Feel Like a Mario Brother

My main concerns in the house up to now have been: keeping water out of the basement and remodeling our bathroom. The basement walls have a tendency to seep liquid fury into our poorly finished basement when it rains. One of three steps have been taken to dissuade this water torture. First the O'Connor brothers (myself and my brother, who happens to have a ladder and other tools needed) cleared out five or six years of rotten, nasty leaves and dirt from our gutters. Thanks Miles. Step two (dirt grading around the house exterior), and three (hydraulic water-lock cement on the basement walls) are in the works.

The bathroom remodel ranks higher on my list for one simple reason, cleanliness. We have gotten by without any issues so far thanks to the hospitality of family and friends. I made a large advancement in my home improvement repertoire today and we are a large step further towards bathroom bliss. It took me two hours this morning to decide whether or not to call a plumber to get a quote. After two hours of pondering, I finally decided to do it myself. After two trips to two different home depots (the one closest to us is horrible, although we did talk to a very helpful guy who knew a lot about our particular style of hardwood floors on my 3rd trip of the day), I returned home with the kind of thing every boy and man dreams about having:

I found that soldering pipe is not as hard as it seems. There are a lot of steps, and a lot can go wrong, but after a lot of practice I got the hang of it.

This went along swimmingly for a couple of hours, taking each step, double checking myself each time. It's a lot like learning a new song. Follow the sheet music the first couple times, trying without until you forget a step, then go back to the book. The last few times went by easily and know I know how liquid metal can osmoticaly fill the gap of a pipe fitting. Cool stuff. All this information is of course useless when you are standing in a 2ftx7ft space looking up at two pipes, barely within reach, that may or may not (but shouldn't) be filled with pressurized water. All I planned to do this time out was cut and cap the pipes, allowing me to remove the pipes above from the walls. It was nerve wracking, but I got it done. The caps have been holding steady for a few hours now, and all is well.

Why would I cut two perfectly good, old pipes? Here's the simplest way I could think to explain it. I need to move the pipes



Imagination helps.

-Bren