Under pressure!

Today, after canceling on us twice, the city contractor came and replaced our water line. This is another one of those big changes that makes living in the house *a lot* more comfortable. So far we've experimented running multiple fixtures (basement sink + kitchen sink, kitchen sink + bathroom sink) and tested the shower head etc. It's *very* impressive. I think we had forgotten what modern water pressure looks/feels like.

This is the new pipe in our basement. It's connected to the old 1/2 inch copper pipe, so there are probably more optimizations we can do to increase pressure further, but for now we are just enjoying the stronger water pressure.

In the end it cost us $1400 for our part of the line after some negotiating. Aside from the scheduling troubles we're fairly pleased with the job so far.

Basement bathroom update

Our basement bathroom has hit an unanticipated snag. Our neighbor is ready to do the rough in.. but we made some unanticipated progress on another project....

In October we had our water tested by the city because we knew we had a lead service line . We tested at twice the allowable lead limit (good thing we weren't drinking the water...). We were put on a special waiting list to get our water pipe replaced (initially they said 8-10 weeks but it's been longer) and a week ago we came home to find some yellow lines and flags in the snow (pictures above, now without snow). Since then we've been waiting for the city's contractor to call to set up the replacement and quote us on getting our part of the line replaced. They finally called on Wednesday to quote us for a replacement to happen on Thursday. We were a bit upset that they didn't give us time to arrange for our own quotes to get our part of the line replaced and tried to charge us more than it needed to cost but after some bartering we agreed on a price.

Unfortunately on Thursday it rained/poured. So now we're scheduled to have our water supply replaced Tuesday afternoon.

Given that our portion of the water pipe replacement will be happening in the basement we figure it's best to get that done first and then do the bathroom rough in once it's done.

Master Bedroom: part 3

The master bedroom skim coating is progressing pretty slow. Without the Christmas deadline we're slacking a bit. That combined with one of us catching a cold.. and it makes for not much to blog about :oP.

Master Bedroom: part 2

Finally, the durabond is done in the master bedroom. If you can believe it, this room was in better shape than the guest room.














For a description of what we're doing, see the entries about our guest bedroom.