Servitude Sunday: More Destruction

As promised, I delivered Troy two more hours today. He decided to tear down the paneling from the southeast corner. We needed to get it out to be able to work on the subfloor. While he was pulling it down, I was smashing nails flat, cutting up the wood and paneling to a disposable size, and bagging it.

Here's the southwest corner now:

The top was painted, but it looks like the bottom section may have had wainscoting on it at some point. I'm going to miss the red paneling; it really was a great colour. I'm thinking of keeping a sample so I can get it matched if I want to paint a room red. That would be neat, I think. There were two layers of paneling, by the way. We are ripping out a lot of layers of this house!

I also found this little bit of history. This outlet was buried behind the paneling. You can see some early wallpaper.

It looks like a papered outlet cover, but there's no cover. It's just the ends of the different pieces. I'm sure it's been long enough that it would look charming again. I guess this also tells us that when they decided to paint over the wallpaper, they didn't bother to take off the cover. :sigh: But wait...there's more.

While I was serving my time, Troy needed help in the basement putting in the new water line. While we were working on that, he wiggled one of the drain pipes. Water gushed out. "Holy crap," he said. "That joint isn't glued." We just keeping finding issues with the drains. (The bathtub's leaking again, by the way.)

Not two minutes later, Troy moved a different pipe and water poured out of that one. Another joint that wasn't glued!!! Troy was able to glue that one once we got rid of the rest of the water and he cleaned it. The first joint we noticed didn't take. Troy thinks they used the wrong glue in the first place and now the right glue won't stick either. So for now it's just a "friction fit" like it's been since we moved here.

Some illustration:

Troy said he was going to give me his most disgusted look.

Here's a diagram of our wonderful drain pipes:

The green lines represent the direction of the drain. The yellow lines show the direction of gravity. They should be going the same way!!

One more:

This is a third joint Troy noticed that was "sealed" with electrical tape. (And you can really see how much the white pipe in his left hand is going down hill to the left. It's supposed to be draining to the right. :big sigh:, right?)

On another note, Troy has finished the cold water plumbing and was able to test it today by turning on the water. No leaks, no drips! He will be happy to tell you we now have water in the kitchen. I will tell you we technically have water in the kitchen. I will save the long story of the pot filler for another day...