Kitchen Plumbing (Days 8 & 9)

... And it did go fairly quickly, once we got the right piping.  Finishing up the plumbing mess of moving the pipes for the upstairs bathroom vertically about 10 inches, that is.

If you recall, the last entry ended on Monday night, with no water to the second floor, after a hard day of things-not-going-as-easily-as-we-expected.  Tuesday morning dawned bright and cold; one plumbing issue was solved in the first half hour, but then we had the typical delaying problems: hadn't bought enough couplings, figured out a more elegant, less risky solution to a specific problem -- but that meant that another pipe was too short, etc.

In the end, after a total of 9 trips to the hardware store, removal of some ceiling (dusty work) and a couple of flooding showers at couplings that hadn't been sealed well enough, we now have lovely new plumbing to the bathroom.  It is out of the way! It doesn't leak! It uses this fabulous new piping proprietorial to the hardware store which snaps into fittings without having to glue it or wrap it -- and, better yet, which snaps out, so you can revise and refit at need. Here are two photos of the work, that bring me a sigh of proud relief, but will be meaningless to you.

We even insulated the hot water pipe for 70% of its run, which is cheap and recommended (if you're in there anyway -- it doesn't save enough money or energy to make it worth ripping into walls to access the pipes).

We also got permits for the remaining work -- after being sent up and down the Portland Development Offices Building in a failed attempt to help us by saving us money. See, we had gotten permits for this project in 2007 (without having since then done any of the work that requires permits). They expired after a year, but for a while yesterday it was an open question - in the minds of the city employees -- whether we could just re-open those permits, saving us about $200. However, our original permits were for home-owner work and these new ones are for contractors, thus, we require new permits (it took three people to figure that out, and two visits, because the offices closed while we were between floors).  All in all, almost everyone we spoke to was friendly and helpful and trying to save us money, but still in the end we'll have to go back three times to that downtown office building (not all their fault for that third visit, which we'll do tomorrow -- we needed to get some signatures).

We ended the day by cleaning up (took over an hour, even though the room is essentially empty) and HomoDommi finished framing in the wall that the sink will be moved to. We were all so exhausted that the house retired for the night before 10 pm, unheard-of early for us.

As I write this blog entry, a legally permitted plumber is ripping up the kitchen, moving the plumbing for the sink about 6 feet and a 90° angle to the left, and adding pipes for garbage disposal and dishwasher.  He and I talked through the options to keep the existing sink in use in the interim between now and when we'll have the new sink cabinetry -- but it will save an additional trip by the plumber (and thus, $$$) if we close off the old sink permanently today.

So, for the duration, we will have no kitchen sink or dishwasher. Aside from a tiny vanity sink in the bathroom, the closest sink is in the basement.  That one is beyond grody, to use a term from my youth -- it's been the main cleaning spot for the cat litter boxes and all HomoDommi's work and art projects, and looking at it, I am reminded of the infamous toilet scene in the movie Trainspotting (I don't recommend you look it up on YouTube unless you have a very strong stomach). We won't be using that directly for dishes. (But it occurs to me that we might be able to hook the portable dishwasher up to that downstairs faucet. Hmmmm. Must consider....)

HomoDommi returns to Boise tomorrow, but will be back next Tuesday. The electrician comes on Monday. Tonight we will have a confab about what can be done next to speed up the process, at least towards finishing off the sink cabinetry.