Bathroom Plumbing and a Whole Lotta Rubble

These aren't the pretties photos but they show the mammoth job we did on the weekend putting the new plumbing into the bathroom. We worked for 19 hours with the plumber both Saturday and Sunday (lucky he's a friend so we weren't paying for his time, only cost us $75 worth of pipes as he supplied all the rest, what a champ!)

All the old pipes were dug up and ripped out and these are the new pipes for the double shower, cut into the brick, laid into the wall and cemented over. Then the double basin mixers were cut into the brick, laid into the wall and cemented over.

The new shower area is where our bath and vanity use to be (see before pics here)

And the new vanity area is where the shower use to be (see before pics here)

We also cut into the brick and laid the electric pipe ready for the electrician to come and hook it up - a new light switch on the wall and a new power outlet near the vanity - there was never a power outlet in here before I use to have to blowdry my hair in the bedroom and charge the electric toothbrushes in the study so I'm very happy about that one!

Once the pipes were in the wall we had to dig a trench for the shower grate and that's when the fun started. I thought the sand was bad that we found under those tiles and concrete, but we had to keep digging deeper and deeper and bringing up limestone, rock and rubble. I just can't believe the huge limestone blocks that were in there.

I carried about 20 buckets through the house, through the kitchen in fact and out the back door (thank goodness for drop sheets on our polished floors!) and dumped about 8 wheelbarrow loads full of this

As we now know houses in Western Australia like ours that have floorboards and sit on limestone blocks - in the wet areas they lay concrete and then the builders dump all their rubble and bricks in here to fill it. It is truly unbelievable what was in there and I'm now dreading the laundry reno as no doubt we'll be faced with the same thing.

Now the plumbing and electrics are in ready, the next step is finding a solution to our window in the shower problem - which is to replace the window with glass bricks. More on that to come when we figure out exactly how we're going to do that, if we'll do it ourselves or pay the professionals to take care of it. Will keep you posted! 

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