Jackhammers are cool.

Sunday marked the beginning of Phase II on the LaFrance basement....bathroom construction. One year ago, almost to the day, we finished the main basement. At that time we chose to skip the bathroom because we needed at least one corner of the basement to store everything while the building went on....so finally it's time to start up work again now that everything has been moved into it's place in the finished portions. There were no rough-ins....pretty standard for any house pre-1980...so I got to rent the mother of all tools---a 150lb jackhammer. 3 hours and 45 minutes later I had the bathroom floor broken up for the new toilet drain, shower drain, sink drain, vent pipes, spliced into the existing cast iron drain pipe heading towards the street (not too smelly actually), spliced into the vent pipe behind the closet wall in our bedroom, and was on my way back to HD tool rental....all with 15 minutes to spare before the late fees kicked in! ...Not to mention just before starting I had just finished my long distance run for the week. I've never been so tired in my life.


I had to haul about 50 gallons of broken up concrete outside, and then hauled 500lbs of new concrete downstairs... and along the way Bosco decided he should camp out right in the way of things. All the new drain pipes and vents went in pretty smooth---it gives you an appreciation for how they did it in the old days....cuting very very heavy cast iron pipes by hand (i cut out about 2 ft of iron, and it weighed 10 lbs), and then melting lead into the fittings to get a snug fit. Not fun work back then. And thats just one tiny piece of the house-building puzzle. PVC isn't too bad to work with in comparison.










7 hours after starting--the new cement is drying, all the dirt is cleaned up, and in a few days I can get back at it...framing is up next. The fun jackhammer is gone... but who doesn't love a framing nail gun?