Utilities R Us

This week was the week of getting new utilities - new plumbing and electrical! And boy, did we need it.

First, the electrical:

We started out with some Old electrical parts. We had knob-and-tube with the ceramic insulators all over the house. This was kind of assumed based on the earlier incident with the cutting of wires.

We had wires just hanging out in the middle of doorways, as well as randomly ending within wall cavities. We were in dire need of an upgrade. So, we upgraded not only the wiring inside the house, but also the wiring outside the house. We now have wonderful 200amp service! This required the utility company to shut off the electricity outside at the pole and keep it off most of the day. We decided to run errands, as there's not much you can do these days during winter with the electricity off.

In order to make sure that the new electrical service didn't set the house on fire, we got a humongous new piece of pipe down the side of the house, and giant-sized wires to go with it.

My favorite bit is that we now have a new electrical panel - 42 breakers in all! There are so many breakers, that we've only used up about half thus far. Seeing as we do have quite a ways to go, that is a good thing.


Next were the plumbing updates:

First we had to remove the old plumbing from the tiny bathroom that we had ripped out. As this bathroom had been installed eons ago, we were not exactly sure what we'd find. And of course, this included a unwanted surprise...

Once we got all of the old plumbing removed, including the waste line, we found out that the previous installers had just cut most of the way thru several floorboards in order to make the plumbing fit underneath the floor. This meant that the area of the house that the tub had been sitting on had really no support from below. It was a very good thing that the tub was so small that no one took a bath in it, as they may have fallen down into the living room below!

So, the end result is that we had to go in and support the cut-thru floor joists so that the new clawfoot tub we are putting in won't fall thru either.

As a part of the upstairs move of the bathroom parts, we had to cut thru the plumbing stack on the first floor, necessitating yet another piece of wall/ceiling to be removed in the den. At the rate we're going, we'll end up with all new sheetrock in the den too!


Here's the upstairs plumbing all new and improved. We were able to put the lines for both of our new bathrooms into the same wall, as they are sharing a wall. This let us save on costs. However, one thing that you cannot see in this picture is the fact that the plumber very nicely put in all of the lovely new piping, but in the WRONG place! All of the plumbing was over one stud cavity to the right, meaning things (such as sinks, toilets, and tubs) wouldn't fit along the wall as they were supposed to. A call to the plumber to come back next week to fix this.


One thing that did get put into the correct location is my water heater, water softener, and laundry. All of this moved from one side of the basement to the other. The new location should give us hot water to the upstairs faster than before. You can also see how lovely the new PVC piping is - red for hot, blue for cold, and white for the waste line. Who knew that plumbing could look like this?


Additionally, I got a laundry tub. This is one of those things that a girl does not realize she will miss until she does not have one. This house did not come with a laundry tub! No where to empty mop buckets, wash out a sweater, or clean paint brushes. Now we have a double bowl one, and I LOVE it! I can wash out brushes in one side and have something soaking on the other. I can do the laundry and empty the mop bucket all at once! No more random things soaking in my kitchen sink. No more mixing drywall compound in the bathroom. Yay for laundry sinks!!