Welds and Water

Yesterday was a day spent in the garage hooking up the pipes for the relocated water heater.  Thank heavens Rick is a good welder because we decided that with the hard, hard water in Dunedin, we would use copper pipe for the job. Copper will last much longer than any plastic ever would.  And for the price of copper today, it should!

New water heater with pipes going over
the rafters in the garage.

We were successful in getting the water heater located in the corner and in getting the pipes up and over the rafters in the garage.  Rick read all of the local codes, one of which that says we must keep the pipes at least 30" from the electrical box.  (That makes sense!)  We actually have the pipes almost 36" from the electrical box, and we will bring them down the wall to the water supply tomorrow.

We had to pierce one beam to get the pipes to the
water supply across the garage.

As the pictures show, the heater is ready for final hook up. You may think we are strange for taking pictures of plumbing, but we would like to add a ceiling some day to the garage, and knowing what pipes are where behind walls and ceilings is very important.  We learned with our first house and first remodeling to always take pictures before putting up the final walls.  Superman x-ray vision is great, but when the man in the cape is not available, having pictures as reference is the next best thing.

We would have loved to hook up the water heater today, especially since Rick accidentally caught his pocket on the release valve of the old heater, causing it to spew water on the floor and then drip into a sand bucket for most of the day.  He finally listened to his wife and tapped in the corroded pin on the old heater to stop the drip.  We cannot shut down the old heater and hook up the new one until we get the new wall built behind the washer and the dryer.  Actually, the cement wall that is there stays; we just want to build a wall out from that one to enclose the plumbing and the dryer duct since we will see that wall from the kitchen.

The 2 x 6 wall awaits refreshed muscles as we stand
this up, carry it into place, and install it ... tomorrow!

We worked on the above-mentioned new wall today, putting together a 2 x 6 structure that we will put into place tomorrow.  Right now it looks a little silly lying on the garage floor for the evening, but we did not have enough time to get it installed today.

Out with the old...

and in with the new!

We did get the new refrigerator, although the delivery was quite late.  The upper handle has a little chip out of it, so I will call tomorrow to get a replacement for the handle.  The rest looks good.  I like that the new refrigerator is larger and that the freezer is on the bottom in a drawer.  That makes so much more sense than pratically having to be on hands and knees when trying to get something out of the veggie drawer when the freezer is on top.  The old and new pictures show what a difference having all white appliances in the kitchen makes.  Now the whole room is clean and new, so I am not really sorry that the old refrigerator is gone.


We have made great progress today.  Are we as fast as the professionals?  No, but through slow and steady work, we are transforming another area of Gladys, making her both better and stronger.  She continues to improve as our efforts bring her closer to our vision of what we want her to be.