Plumbers Delight

A few years ago when we lived in Terre Haute we had to replumb out entire home. It seems that sub quality copper piping was used throughout the home. As we investigated alternatives we finally went with flexible plastic pipe (which has no influence on this blog) and they made the installation in 1.5 days at considerably less cost then estimates for copper pipe. I investigated the viability of the flexible plastic pipe and received ringing endorsements from contractors I trusted. It was not only a short experience, but it was painless. It was almost as if they weren't there.

The living room wall - before

Same wall, during! Plumbing for the spare bathroom (on the
other side of the wall)

We are in the midst of the same experience in our new Las Vegas home, but this time it's the result of a class-action suit and we don't pay anything. There are some differences, however. In Indiana we had a crawl space. In Las Vegas we have a slab. In Indiana the plumbing was under the house in the crawl space. In Las Vegas it is in the ceiling. For a midwesterner the whole idea of water pipes in the attic is scary, but then we don't get very cold here. In Indiana they had to cut a two holes in our walls, and that was to get to the showers. In Las Vegas it was a different story.

On Thursday morning the first crew showed up to plasticize the house. We literally had plastic sheeting handing everywhere. When I got home from work it was like living in a maze. Then the plumbers showed up. I was gone by then and JoAnn figured out in a hurry she was best out of the house also. We easily had over a dozen holes in our walls. The good news was that all of the plumbing was completed on Thursday and on Friday the wallboard and plaster crew showed up to patch the holes and prep the house for painting. By the time they left at 3 pm all the holes were patched in the house and garage.

Outdoors with NO covering!

As a side note, on Thursday I walked out behind the house and there was a hole in the back of the house - a BIG hole. The insulation was laying on the ground and there was no covering over the hole. You can take me out of the midwest, but you can't take the midwest out of me. All I could see in my imagination was rain (and we get so much here!) and critters. I moved the insulation to the patio and went inside and cut a sizable piece of plastic and covered the hole. When I talked to the foreman in the morning it was clear he did not have a midwestern mentality. He didn't see any problems. I did, but it's that midwestern perspective.

I'm writing this on Saturday morning while I wait for the painters to show up. It's 9:12 am and all the other crews have been here at 7 am. The painter showed up at 2:30 pm. On Sunday we discovered, while sitting in Sacrament, that our neighbors from 2 blocks away were hogging the painter on Saturday morning. Today (Monday) it's cleaning, hook the dishwasher up (5 days without a dishwasher!!!), and the walk through. Actually, it looks like no one was even here and we got a new paint job and all the left-over paint!