From Oh Oh !?! to Oh YES !!!

I can't adequately describe the plumbing that lurks in the basement of the house we occupy ... even our plumber has shook his head at the overlapping pipes, dead end fittings, unattached pipes and all manner of other things that hang overhead and along the various walls in the basement ... 106 years of history are displayed up there !! (The picture above is NOT of our basement ... this is way TOO simple to be our basement !!!)

And dear God, don't even ask about the WIRING !!! That's a WHOLE other nightmare ...

But yesterday as I stood in the basement watching the plumbers deal with the plugged sewer line, I noticed that there were some drain pipes that could be consolidated and simplified ... a cut here, a joint there, another cut there and another joint here and we could eliminate a whole line that drains into the floor drain rather than being tied into the sewer system itself ...

So this morning Ms H and I ventured back into the basement and began planning our plumbing project ... Then it was off to the Hardware store for the first of several trips ... If I've learned one thing about me and plumbing, it is that when I start I'm making no less than five trips to the hardware store before I'm done ... (today was NO exception) ...

We got the fittings we thought we needed (they turned out to be too big and needed to be exchanged on a later trip), and the glue to hold it all together ... Then we got ready to cut the pipe ... but first we needed to get the right allen key to change the saw blade (another trip to the hardware store) ...

We then had everything in place to cut the pipe were I THOUGHT (take note of this - 'where I thought') it needed to be cut ... I was off by ... oh about 30 centimetres or more (that's in excess of a foot for my American friends) ... Drat !!! Another trip to the Hardware store went on the list for a joint to fix my Ooops !!!???

But before we went, we moved farther up the pipe and cut it where it needed to be cut in the first place ... you can always add new pieces ... and began assembling the bits ... "Oh drat !!" ... the bits were too big, so we had to head back to the hardware store for an exchange ... forgot to get the OTHER joint ... so yet ANOTHER trip was neccessitated ...

The rest of the project went fairly well ... we glued and secured the lines we needed ... we cut the line from the washing machine in the RIGHT place and set the elbow joint at the right angle ... then cut a piece of piping the right length to reach and fit in the Y joint on the main line ... then we dealt with the "oops" cut by heading to the hardware store, yet again for the connector joint we needed ...

By three o'clock we had the pipes secured, glued and everything was working tiddly boo !!! The only down side is ... now I have about 18 feet of pvc piping that is cut off at both ends and lingers on the wall like so many other pipes from previous renovations, repairs and so on ...

If I decide not to remove it, it just means that some day in the future someone will look at the disconnected piping and like me, utter the phrase - "what the H!&* were THEY thinking??"

Oh well ... in the world of old house, few things are predictable ... and seldom do you discover something wholly new ... what goes around comes around ... many times !!