A plan that worked?

Months ago Wifey called to tell me that water was dripping from the kitchen cabinets. I came home to find a significant amount of water dripping down between our nice new kitchen cabinets, right under where I knew the water lines run in the ceiling above. I had to take down some cabinets, call in an emergency favor from plumber-friend-former colleague Mike, and the offending leaky old copper pipe was replaced. Not without damage to said new cabinets mind you! For some reason I didn't have any pictures. I know, weird.

Then, a few days ago, I posted about the continuing issues with our home - specifically the water pipe from hell that decided to strike again. This time it was coming from further down the same line, after the part we had replaced earlier. Poor Wifey had to call me again about water dripping from around the same area, this time a bit higher on the wall, coming out from the crown molding. After cutting some holes in said wall and ceiling, it became obvious that major work had to be done to remove the rest of that dang pipe once and for all. If I chose to go through the ceiling in the kitchen I wouldn't have been able to get to the whole pipe, and I would have had to rip out a bunch of sheetrock and the drown molding. I was not looking forward to that. So, I decided to go the opposite direction, down.

Witness...

- A hint of carnage from the hallway upstairs.

- Some of the floor in Pudge's room removed.

- Where Red and Pudge's dresser usually sits. The new pipe is the small white one in the middle. The copper one to its right is a hot water line, and Mike said they never get the pinhole leaks like the cold water lines get so we left it alone.

- Good friend Mike. He took a day off of work to come help me out. Not too bad for him though. Good a day off and made some extra cash. :) I joked with Mike that he was over fixing my broke-down house so much he was on my blog more than my kids. Here (he was the one who came over after my hand ran into that knife).

- Full length of floor removed. On the left at the end is the heater vent for the kitchen outside of the laundry closet and on the right is the bathroom fan for the downstairs bathroom. Going through the floor like we did allowed us to get all the way to the end of the horizontal section of the pipe. If we wanted to get rid of all of it I would have had to move the stackable washer/dryer in the laundry closet and rip out the wall in that space. Maybe eventually, when we washer finally dies, but I didn't want to add much more to this project than was absolutely necessary.

- More carnage. Kept the air cleaner going to try to get rid of some of the sawdust from Pudge's room.

- 'Lil 'ol me, putting down the new floor.

- New floor, in!

- Carpet about to be laid back down.

- Pudge, post tubby, not aware that he was taking his life in his own hands by walking on a floor his Dad put down.

- Pudge being cute in the newly renovated closet. Come out of the closet dude!

- Dresser and book shelf back in place.

| - The garbage bag I asked Wifey to tape up in the kitchen to catch the debris. Not a bad idea if I do say so myself. That will come down when we're ready to patch the hole. No point in having a open space if it isn't necessary right?


Well, there it is. A project finished in one day. If you don't count the hole in the ceiling. I can hardly believe it! Even with a trip to Home Depot in the rain, stopping through nap time, and working with a sprained knee, it got done. Yeah for small miracles.

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