Rebuilding: Structural Repairs & New Plumbing

This was easily the most stressful part of the entire project, and the part that took the longest. Relocating all the plumbing in a house built in the 1930s is no small task. Thank God for my Dad! We would not have been able to do this on our own, and would perhaps still be without a working toilet.

To recap, every floor joist in the space was cut, eaten by termites, or otherwise compromised. So like everything else, the solution was more time, money, and work.  Several days later, and we had a brand new floor structure and plywood subfloor (which was laid down and pulled up a few times as we finalized all the new plumbing):

Tying the new 4" main sewer line into the existing cast iron:

The new PVC drain lines laid out:

More new plumbing next to the abandoned toilet drain in the cast iron pipe:

Below is a shot of what was easily the worst night of this project:  

This was where the main hot / cold water supply lines branched to service the downstairs kitchen and bath.  The  old lines (dark gray ones) kept breaking as we tried to take them apart to install the new CPVC tubing.  If one more old fitting in this picture broke, we would've had to start cutting random holes in our kitchen floor to find and tap into the existing plumbing (the crawlspace area under the kitchen was inaccessible). 

New fixture locations starting to appear:

New shower valve:

Fixed the rat's nest of old piping that would have been visible against the ceiling:

Had to take apart the kitchen one day too.  The bolts that anchored the microwave to the wall were in the way of the recess for the mirror / medicine cabinet, so we had to do some modification.

Nice little view of the kitchen... from the bathroom:

Plumbing probably took around 4 weeks (because two full time jobs and life), during which we hammered, drilled, torched and twisted more than we ever expected.  Per our previous post, we also uncovered the rusting cast iron lines that supplied the upstairs bathroom, likely months from bursting on their own due to improper mating with newer copper:

We also learned the hard way that our bathroom plumbing affects the entire house as there were no shutoff valves installed in the original cast iron lines, many of which we had to leave in place.  One morning after the new pipes were glued together we showered upstairs. The water had a slight odor, which was to be expected due to the amount of fresh piping and CPVC glue. But when I began to blow dry my hair, nothing dried... it was greasy and smelly like the glue.  I had no option other than to take a deep breath and throw it in a pony. Such was our life for a little while.

We also accidentally crossed the hot water and cold water line for the upstairs. Whoops! That was a fun morning!

Both kitchens also suffered from disturbing all the old plumbing, with so much buildup breaking free inside the lines, everything in the rest of the house stopped working. Josh ended up replacing the downstairs kitchen sink lines and both faucets so we could finally have good pressure cold AND hot), and ice the freezer again.

Brand new piping and valves!