2022, home, Uncategorized, work

Making Progress

24 Comments

Although not everyone might think so, the following photos suggest to me that great progress is being made with our bathroom remodals.

Things have been stalled for a couple of weeks due to weather and getting the plumbers to finally show up, which they did on Tuesday. For the upstairs bathroom they had to move the pipes for the toilet over about 3 feet to make room for a larger vanity and sink. They also had to set up new pipes for the shower, and cap pipes for the old shower. They had to do some work in the attic and in the basement for running the pipes.

The downstairs bathroom didn’t need any new plumbing. The tub there just gets a liner and new surround.

The carpenters are coming next week to finish the drywall. After that, the main contractor can come to install the new flooring and fixtures. This is taking longer than I anticipated, but seeing the progress this week has given me hope that our home will soon be back in order. I am not a patient person, and the uproar that this remodel has caused has been hard to deal with.

Would you rather be a plumber, an electrician, or a carpenter? What is giving you hope these days? What are some satisfying projects you have seen to their conclusions?

24 thoughts on “Making Progress”

  1. Tough choices. I admire all three trades. Carpentry gets the edge for having a regular outlet (hammering) with which to relieve one’s accumulated frustrations and anger in the course of a day. There’s also a bit more pride in seeing your finished project in the open rather than having it hide behind the walls (pipes, wires, etc.)

    If you know any tradespeople, please thank them for their expertise even if you don’t have a need for them now. We need many more folks to get into the business of building, repairing, and maintaining all sorts of things. And spread the word to young people that there’s big money in the trades these days because of the shortages.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  2. A carpenter, because that’s what my grandfather was, and because I can see how I could be creative with it. After I left teaching, when I first moved to Mpls, I flirted with the idea of being an architect – went to the first week of a beginner night class… realized that I couldn’t do it while also working a 40-hour week.

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  3. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    If I was to choose a trade it would be carpenter. I have good spatial skills, so carpentry would use that innate characteristic. Plumbing is waaay too yucky and germs for my tastes. Electricity is too volatile.

    My kitchen remodel, much like Renee’s bathrooms, was the most complicated project, and also the most rewarding. It made our house so much more usable than it had been with the former layout. It also makes it fun to have company, which leaves us forever glad we did this project. I was glad not to live in it, though. Watching it all proceed through the camera while we were in AZ was the best circumstance possible.

    Looking forward to Blevins on Sunday at 2pm!

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  4. I think that, of the three, I’d prefer being a plumber. My work would get covered up, so I wouldn’t have to be pretty at it. Things done with plastics in the 21st century appear (I said, “appear”) to be easier than those done with steel & copper. I might just make it with those stipulations.

    Of course, being not a plumber, but clergy, I’m overconfident, and know that I’m likely to be wrong.

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  5. I think carpenter because you can see the progress. I love seeing videos or photos of the Amish while they are doing construction, particularly barnraising. Watching them raise up the structure of walls is fascinating.

    YA and I are so close to finishing the front porch that I am starting to dream about it. It’s been 3 1/2 years.

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    1. I hope this means that we get to launch it at the Annual COVID Disrupted Gift Exchange. I propose that I bring champagne, that we dub it the VSYA Gateway complete with the champagne smashed over the bow.

      Baboons from Michigan, Spain, Texas, Arizona, and North Dakota welcome. Guaranteed -20 degree temperatures with blizzard for the full winter experience. Brush up on your Vikings Chatter.

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        1. Yes, I am having the gift exchange this year. Invites are going out in the Solstice cards which will mail the Monday after Thanksgiving.

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  6. A lot would depend on whether you were a carpenter, plumber, or electrician doing new construction or repair work. I don’t think there is a lot of crossover. New construction tradesmen are not dealing with live electricity for the most part, or sewage in the plumbing system. Rough carpenters, who are the ones building the essential framework, generally are doing it with nail guns, not hammers these days. They are working to a plan, so there isn’t much room for creativity. Finish carpenters and cabinet makers do the precise work with wood. There may or may not be much of a role for them in a new construction depending upon how customized it is.

    Plumbing repair and remodeling tends to be messier than electrical work. While much of plumbing has veered away from copper and cast iron and toward PVC for waste systems and flexible PEX for supply, the existing cast iron and copper still has to be accommodated and transitions made for the new work. I know from personal experience that dealing with the drain lines often entails negotiating a quantity of black slimy guck.

    At least electrical work is relatively clean and oftentimes new wiring can be snaked through the walls with minimal disruption. Also, wiring components tend to be more standardized than plumbing ones. Plumbing jobs in my experience always require more trips to the hardware store.

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  10. my good friend during my youth was a plaster, stucco drywall guy who bought multiple houses, turned them into duplexes and taught me how to do lots of stuff that needs to be done to houses in this life, plumbing electrical drywall carpentry roofing windows concrete is all stuff that you become an expert at the second time you do it

    I really enjoy all the handiwork and if I were to choose a craft for a vocation, maybe it would be furniture making I think it would be a type of furniture, making a scene out California where it’s a free form design and you cannot let the wood dictate where the furniture is going making beautiful cabinets, tables chairs that don’t follow the geometric designs.

    I may have told the story once before on the blog, but I’ll do it again because it’s appropriate

    The doctor has a problem with his plumbing and makes the phone call and when the plumber comes out to look at the job analyzes what needs to be done and gives the doctor a bid of $3000 to get the problem solved and the doctor says that’s as much money as I charge for an appendectomy to which the plumber says yeah that’s what I used to charge when I did appendectomies for a living too

    plumbers get paid well

    The surgeries that I’ve recently gone through make me feel like doctors look at their work, kind of like an oil change or a plumbing project

    Here’s the task get er done submit the bill

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