Destruction Resumes

After a several-month hiatus of not much work on the house, I finalized my kitchen plans and ordered the cabinets. In the month or so it will take for them to arrive, there's a ton of work to be done getting the room ready.

First off, the bathroom is above the kitchen, and as anyone who's lived in an old house before knows, this means the ceiling has been assaulted by plumbing leaks over the years and probably never fixed properly. So at a minimum, I wanted to tear down the bulging plaster under the bathroom. Then, there's the nearly complete lack of electricity in this room (as in every other one).

Finally, I have this built-in cabinet that needs to move to the other side of the room, since it's presently on the outside wall of the house where the windows live, which will become my counter at some point.

Upon beginning the ceiling removal, it quickly became clear that the whole thing had to come down. It didn't take a lot for that to happen. The plaster was rotted and crumbling, and it more or less took itself down with a little nudging. This revealed the horror that is the plumbing in my bathroom. This was all more or less expected, though I was hoping that SOME work had ever been done. It looks like it's all original. Steel water supply pipes? I don't think so.


Finally, the built-in cabinet, as it turns out, was hiding a stack that sticks out about a foot from the wall. That also has to move, since I'm not having a 2" steel pipe sticking out of the middle of my countertop. On the plus side, the there is no evidence of any structural problems. Everything except the utilities looks great.



At right: the plumbing to my bathroom. Oh yes. That's got to go.