a photoblog of what i did today.....

[glatt]

My son was doing most of the work at this point. I want him to do as much as he can, and I'll pay him. He needs to keep busy this summer.

So he cut a hole out under the sink inside this cabinet. Tried to keep it neat so patching it would be easier later. He found it to be tiring working with a dull drywall saw reaching through the cabinet drawer openings. He did a good job though.


Then I got my cordless drill out and put a new spade bit in and started drilling down into the bottom plate. I though I just needed to drill through the bottom plate. I wasn't thinking at first that there would be the thickness of the joists and then the top plate of the ceiling below. When I got through the bottom plate of the second floor, the cordless drill battery started hitting the edge of the drywall hole and I couldn't get any deeper.

So I switched to my electric corded drill. It was smaller and could drill deeper and broke through. But I wasn't through the top plate yet. I needed to run off and buy a 16" spade bit.

So I did, and a fair bit of sweating and pushing in an awkward position later on the drill, I broke through the top plate of the floor below. There was actually a third framing member in there that I also had to drill through. No idea what that was. Maybe some diagonal bracing at the stairs.

Anyway, once I was fianlly through, we fished some wire through there, hooked it unto the red hot water side pex, and pulled it through.


And then down at the basement stairs hole, I drilled down into the first floor bottom plate and into the joist area and snaked the red tube into the basement.


So that went pretty well. Now for the blue tube.

I didn't take pictures of this, but I had a hell of a time getting a hole drilled for the blue tube. The spade bit would break through the bottom plate and then get steered off in the wrong direction and kept hitting the same nail. I tried 3 different holes to avoid that nail, but the lower framing members kept steering the bit to the nail.

Finally, I drilled a fourth hole and could drill it straight and miss the nail.

So we fed the blue tube down.

[glatt]

So here is where we stopped for now up in the bathroom. I'll make the connections later. It will be a big rushed job because I have to shut the water off to the house and need to make about 100 connections before we can turn the water back on again. Basically a day without plumbing.



And this is what it looks like inside the upstairs bathroom wall. See all the drilling I did without ever breaking through in any of those holes? This was while all contorted inside a freaking cabinet.



More as this project progresses. Maybe this weekend.