Patience.  Yes.  That’s the long and the short of it.

I must be getting to know myself a little bit better with age, because the time I spend hand wringing, deciding whether or not to go ahead with things or try to work around something to save work, has lessened considerably.  Hell, maybe it’s just experience — having bonked my head just a few too many times on the last thing I tried to “work around” — but, either way, it’s full steam ahead down below.

Let me start by saying how nice it is to be writing this up on my home computer instead of a laptop.  Dual screens, mouse, full-size keyboard, all my little utility  programs at my disposal, and instead of noise from wherever as a back drop, I’ve got my media player pumping out tunes.   Yeah, and don’t forget a fast internet connection!!!  Heaven.

So, as I said.  On with it!

Doing a blog post about this wonder of amusement wasn’t really on my mind when I finally got started, so the work done in the basement bedroom isn’t really documented… at all.  Oh well.

It got a new coat of paint – ceiling and all, I fixed a clearance issue above the closet clothes hanger, painted the shelves there too, and now the room is storage for things as I do the remainder of the basement.

From there I started out in the main area, and that stupid landing that just had to go.

It was stuffed full of insulation, which is OK for deadening sound, but also really good as a sponge.  Ideal material to pack over a floor drain.

That black ABS line there is the drain for the laundry room.  Nice.  Elliot!!!  Hey, if you’re going to build a landing instead of fix things, why not put it to use?  Thus, the first branch of the stupid tree.   The green plastic strip is a “form” to prevent the grout that was poured to level the floor from going down the floor drain.  That will have to be redone as well, but later… much later.

First, to the main problem.  Luckily (and this happens too often) my next door neighbor had a jack-hammer to lend me, so I got to it.   I thought I knew exactly where the line should be, so at first I only hammered out a small area.  That didn’t last long, though.

 

Yeah, ok, so I needed to attach the line further down from the main clean-out, and that is just how the angle turned out.   Meh, concrete is 5 buks a bag right now.  Shouldn’t take too many.

Note that the frost wall is propped up with a 2×6 and a wedge.  This is more work for later.  I should be able to knock the base plate off, fasten it down to the concrete, and stub out the studs to make a full wall.  That’s the plan now, anyways.  We’ll see how that turns out once I get to it.

This ugly stand under the sink is one of the things I’m going to be glad to be rid of.  Remember that tree?  This is a leaf.  I’ll keep the sink, I use it quite often, but that lovely stand is firewood now, along with the makeshift plumbing behind it. 
It was time to call my plumber friend and get a clue as to what I was going to have to do.  Between the two of us, we came up with a pretty accurate list of what we needed, but do you think that is what I came home with?  Naaaa.  I got doubles of things I didn’t need, was charged for things I didn’t get, and didn’t get some things I needed.   See, this sort of crap happens in the first world as well, but at least I speak the language.  Pffftttt, why bother?  For the extras, I’m sure I’ll find a use for them eventually.  I was only really missing a solid P-trap and the proper adapter for the old copper drain, the rest… will come out in the wash.  🙂

So, from there I started the mock up, but not before having to relocate the water lines for the utility sink.  That was fun.  There is more to plumbing than “sh&t goes downhill”.

Such as you better put some thought into which piece you glue first so that you don’t end up in a spot you can’t work yourself out of.  Don’t kid yourself, those angles look simple, and they probably are to someone who works with it all day, but trying to get the right angle out of double 45′ s so that they meet each other bang on was a real head scratcher.
When I was still kicking around in steel toes, I used to write a slogan on all my hard hats — ” You wouldn’t believe how hard I have to work to be lazy”.  Most people didn’t understand it, and just gave it a laugh, but what it really meant was that I only want to do things once, so I’ll sit and think for a while before I do anything.  Here was my solution for the nightmare above, which was all unglued, and had to come apart and go back exactly the same way.

A little piece of masking tape, cut right at the joint and marked, gave me both depth and alignment at once.  It all went together quite nicely, working the kitchen drain first, then the laundry room.

I only made one mistake by turning one 45 over, which messed me up but good.  “How the $^(% did that happen?!?”  My little pieces of tape and marks were exactly the same on both pieces.  It took a long time for me to figure out what had gone wrong, but once I did… well, you can only laugh, because it’s better than not ever knowing what your mistake was.

Ok, that went so well, let’s cover it up.

Which is how it stands today.  I have to pour concrete, which is best saved for a day that I’m not sore all over.

You folks that complain about how much plumbers cost, let me tell you, it’s hard work.  Working in a hole in the ground is back-breaking.  Up, down, up, down, get this, get that, up, down,… yeeesh!

At least now I can look forward to a level floor for the rest of my time here.  While I was at it, I was busy adding little things here and there.  I always wanted a plug outside the laundry room for a vacuum, and the TV was miles away from the cable outlet, so I re-routed that.  While I was at it, I ran a LAN line for my media player in the basement and suspended it nicely to fall in line with all the rest of the networking I’ve already done in the house.  It might seem trivial, and I’ll admit I can see a little bit of OCD involved here, but you have to understand that there is a suspended ceiling down here.  Until I did this, every time I needed to move something, which was often enough, I had to deal with a thousand snakes on my head.

I’m much happier having done the work, and now all that you see here is up and out of the way.  You could say I like the “built in” look.

I have still to pour concrete, repair the walls, fill, sand, paint, etc…. and that is before I even think about carpet and underlay.  I’m a long way from starting on the upper kitchen cupboards, but at least I’m busy.