It’s a trap!

That’s right, it’s a trap. Two of them, actually. One in the bathtub and one in the bathroom sink. And they are both clogged and leaking.

First off, let me apologize for the lack of blogposts the past month or so. It's been really busy with my travel for work, moving into the house, and doing lots of stuff still (I got a chainsaw...enough said).

Now about the plumbing: my brother-in-law can do some plumbing but since the house is so old the pipes are cast iron and not copper or PVC, meaning I needed to get a professional to help.

Okay, here is a hint. If you hire a contractor to do something, say an electrician, let him know of other projects you also want done. The home repair industry is pretty tight-knit, so either your contractor can refer you to a friend or has a colleague he works with that can do the work. As luck would have it, our electrician works with another electrician who also specializes in plumbing. Score!

So here’s the deal with cast iron pipes. They eventually will need to be replaced. They corrode over time and get a rust/calcium build up that essentially, like a clogged artery, reduces the flow of water to nothing. This is what ours looked like on the inside:

On top of these pipe issues, we also had our plumber install a new shower diverter and put in a new toilet (yeah, we could have done it, but he was doing work in the bathroom anyway). All in all the plumbing work (parts & labor) set us back about $970 ($145 for the new toilet and $50 for installation; $400 for the bathtub drain, trap & lever to be repaired and $375 for the sink to be fixed, new diverter and shower head, and installation).

Since we didn’t get quotes from other plumbers I cannot say if this is on the high-end or not. But a quick Google search seems to indicate it wasn’t that bad (saw some people paying $200 or more for a toilet to be installed), but I advise you to get some quotes if you need similar work done. We went with what was easiest for us and with people we trusted, so even if the price was a tad more, the hassle of dealing with shoddy work/waiting on someone to do the work was worth avoiding.

Time spent: 1 day
Cost: $970

More blogs to come in the following weeks. We'll be covering:

• Painting
• Kitchen Renovation
• Cutting a Rug (Not Dancing)
• Releasing the Kraken
• Removing fuzzy wallpaper
• Moving in
• And more...