This is NOT for the faint hearted....

Have any of you seen Money Pit? with Tom Hanks.... STORY OF MY LIFE!!! 

Ok so its really not that bad, but things did get a little crazy over the weekend.Thursday I was doing laundry and my washing machine drain overflowed. Several times I might add. Only 2 of 4 loads completed with no apparent way to fix the overflow, laundry is on hold. We contact a Jerry's plumbing. $175 at least to snake the drain.They came out and gave us a quote on sight on Friday and said it would be 280 to snake and 700 to install a "clean out". because we apparently didnt have one.  so we decide to try it ourselves first. 

Saturday morning for $25  Matt rented a drain snake. He gave it his best shot for a few hours with a handheld device and felt overwhelmed so we decided we would just have a plumber do it. so we called B. Hirsch plumbing. they say they will be there on Monday at 9am. so we are out of a washing machine for the weekend. $14 in quarters and Matt took the clothes to the Laundromat. Sunday morning getting ready for church. While showering, the water doesnt drain at normal speed. Getting dressed, hear the toilet flush (a normal un-worrisome sound in any other house but mine) go in the bathroom to brush my teeth and see the toilet has overflowed and the bathtub had still not drained all the way.  Now we really cant wait for the plumbers to come. For the rest of the day sunday we had to stagger our potty breaks to give it enough time to drain. Monday 9:15 I see a truck with two men smoking in my driveway. A few minutes later a knock on my door. Its the plumbers!!! one mid-forties Hispanic man wearing a grungy IN-N-OUT T-Shirt the other a shorter heavier-set white man with a grungy Hot Rod T-Shirt on. both with buz cuts. They go into the bathroom and turn the shower on and flush the toilet and guess what happens. The toilet overflowed surprise surprise. so they go up on the top of the house with their snake, cause they "couldnt find an easy access pipe" and for about a half hour to fourty five minutes they were up ontop of my house smoking again. when they were done they told me that they think the pipes have been intruded with the roots of the big old trees that were all around. he went and checked the bathtub again and it now wasnt draining at all and neither was the toilet. so he tried using my plunger and when that didnt work he turned to me and said "good luck ma'am" . that snaking cost was $185. and now i have a completely non working toilet and tub and laundry. I call matt again and he calls another plumber, McBrides. he explains to them the problem and they suggested going with Action Rooter because the problem sounded bigger than what they were comfortable dealing with. That is where this nice guy comes in.  

This is Dave. My guess is he is in his mid 60s. He is from Action Rooter. and from the moment he got their I felt relieved. he promised me that we would have functioning drainage by the time he left. We had asked them to Snake and Scope our drain. I showed him the receipt from the previous company so he could have a better idea of what was going on. then we walked around the house to get back to his truck for some tools and guess what he found. our "clean out" that neither of the other two plumbers could see. it was in plain view in the front yard. He chuckled and said that they must not have been very experienced plumbers. <oh and thats Billy on the bucket. > in this picture they are scoping the drain to see what direction it goes and what is the cause of the blockage. after a few minutes dave starts to prob the ground to follow the pipe. he found the pipe that lead from the  toilet and bath to the main line just outside the house by the clean out. so they dug it up. once uncovered you could see that the pipe was oozing liquid. not a lot but an obvious amount. He then explains to me that my pipes are made out of compressed tar paper. and at one point there had been a clog in this very spot. so someone cut open the pipe to fix the blockage and then used cement to patch it. many years go by and the tree roots from the avocado start to intrude and block the pipe. as he's telling me this he probes what essentially is a cement cork and it collapses into the drain which relieves the pressure and if any of you have ever popped a zit or seen footage of oil shooting out of the ground. its kinda the same idea. i watched crap, literally POOP ooze then shoot out of the ground 3 feet high from the pipe. i'm sorry to be crude for two seconds but bathrooms smell bad enough after you pass a BM. I could have lived my life never having smelt the potentially WEEKS worth of Feces shooting out of that pipe.

I can only say that I  am SOOO glad thats not my job. so long story short he found the clog, released it. properly patched the hole. and buried the evidence. on that day alone we spent about

$600 on plumbers.  LAME.
but i am SOOOOOO grateful to have functioning plumbing again.


Anyway on to the fun stuff. what the Contractor has done:

Old Window

New Window

This Picture is of the new siding put on at the back of the house. it was previously just particle board   

Now the stuff I have done: 

I patched a large crack in the middle of the ceiling.

I removed the Kitchen Tiles from the step outside because they were dangerously slippery.

I took off the shower doors.

and started primering the Living room.

what Matt has done :

He removed all the Drywall 

 

we found everything from Spider eggs to petrified mice to plants in between the outside wall and the drywall.

Doesnt that room just look cold. and we were totally right there was NO insulation anywhere in that room 

Then he added insulation and it already looks warmer!!

 If you notice in the Above picture there is a ceiling fan and light. Matt removed it and put up 4 can lights in its place. and insulated the ceiling. :) 

And here, just last night he hung his first piece of drywall.