Our New Old Plumbing...

This Saturday, with the help of family and friends, we were able to cross a huge "to do" off our list of house projects. Last year, we realized that the water supply lines running up to our 2nd floor laundry room freeze up in cold temps because they are routed through an exterior wall. Jim spent many days last winter with a hair dryer behind the refrigerator trying to thaw the pipes. This year, we have been draining the water out of the lines whenever the laundry is not in use. Definitely not convenient- but the fix had been quoted at upwards of $2000 by a couple different plumbers.

Stepping in to save the day were Marty, Jim's brother in law, and Ron, a good friend, who both work for an HVAC company and are very handy guys. Jim's sister Judy and our neice Julie came a long to help as well and we ended up needing everyone- especially when we needed someone upstairs, someone downstairs, and someone in the basement to communicate as pipes were being fed through, lines tested, etc.

Of course the project became more complicated than initially planned. We realized a while in that the wall upstairs was not directly above where we needed to feed the pipes down to the basement, as we had initially thought. Marty graciously volunteered to climb into the attic space off the office to feed pipes (they used flexible tubing, called PEX) and do other work as necessary.

At the end of the day, after 12 hours of work and 2 trips to Home Depot, they had moved the pipes out of the wall and connected new supply lines and a drain for a new utility sink, saving us literally thousands of dollars. They even retrofit our furnace to accept replacable filters - just for good measure.

We are beyond grateful to have such wonderful family and friends who were willing to spend a whole Saturday working on 'Our New Old House'.

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I think just about everyone spent some time on top of the fridge...

The beautiful finished result. We love our new laundry sink!Thanks to Karen, too, for taking care of things at Dad's house so he could come down to visit for the day. This was truly a group effort!