Terre Haute House Repair - Kitchen (1)
Our kitchen as never been particularly tidy. This isn't any fault of the kitchen itself, it's just we're particularly messy people. Things get left lying around until they either become irrelevant or urgent!
Our messy kitchen before we started work on it
a little messier than usual as it does contains sone of our stuff we moved from other rooms -
but not that much!
8th June 2009
As the new countertops were due on 26th June, 2009, the first thing to do was clear the kitchen...
Our cleared kitchen - 24th June 1909
The next day the old countertops came out...
The old countertops are off! - 25th June 2009
The old kitchen cabinets were in great shape. It's best not to look behind some of the backboards though as the walls are old plaster and lathe. Our builder, Bill, tried to remove the splashback but had to stop when he realized he'd have to resurfcae the wall behind them. The new splashback will be glued directly to the old. It's an old house and things like this happen - sometimes it's best to leave some things as they are.
As usual, the problem was the plumbing. There was a shutoff valve on the cold waer supply, but it was jammed solid. Doen the basement there were two more shutoffs for the hot and cold. The handle on the cold water one just turned round and round and the hot water one wouldn't turn the hot water off completely.
Luckily i has an end cap that fitted over one of the end pipes and I finally got the under-sink cold water valve closed with the help of a wrench. The flexible pipe to the faucets both said 3/8" FIP (female iron pipe) to 1/2" compression. I bought two new 3/8" end caps, but they were too big for the 3/8" FIP, so I bought two 1/4" FIP and those were two small. Why is this? How the hell do they measure pipes if you can't get the sizes to match? I'll be glad when we get a plumber in to completely replace that horrible plumbing in the basement - all the old iron piping can go and the whole system can be routed properly.
I hate our plumbing
I can't wait to have all this old iron piping replaced
In the image above, in the center of the image you can see a black rubber compression plug. I put this in several years ago because our waste water kept leaking. The old trheads of this pipe, ehich is embedded in the all ahd rotted through and couldn't be fixed, at least by me. The pipe was half choked with rust, hard water deposits and debris so I simply blocked it off and ran new plastic waste pipe down to the basement. I'm sure the "christmas tree" effect of the waste plumbing downstairs in the basement isn't up to code and will also need to be replaced soon.
Our "Christmas Tree" of a waste water system in our basement
This page created 25th June 2009, last modified 2nd August 2009
