Scott has started installing the plumbing. He decided to route it under the house to fix the problem with the new septic system that had been installed incorrectly. When installed, the pipes didn't have the proper angle of descent into the basins. By going under the house, he will be able to get the proper pitch directly from the drains to the septic basin.  

This approach means a lot of flooring and walls have to be removed.

Here are pics after two days of work.

The sunroom was nice, but we have big plans for it. We will update the windows, put doors on the river wall, and put wood floors in to match the rest of the house. So on Monday (9/16), Scott took up the floor, started to dismantle the fireplace surround, and removed trim and beadboard. Doing it today allowed him to get the material into the dumpster, which is now filled to the brim.

Comparison pics.

Scott was thinking of things that would need eventual demo and that could go in the dumpster while we had it, and he noted the deck. His brother offered to help out today, and so he set to dismantling the deck.

Meanwhile, Scott finished digging the cistern hole, and the brothers got the cistern into the hole.

The next day, Scott got the deck moved to the dumpster and the wood pile moved to the edge of the property.

Scott has moved a lot of rocks.

On Saturday, 9/14/2024, Scott and I went out the river house. While he continued to dig the cistern hole, I kept filling the dumpster. 

I started with the pile of roofing. OMG shingles are a PIA. I had to peel them off the ground and each other, put them in the wheelbarrow, take them back out of the wheelbarrow bits at a time, and throw them into the dumpster. Mind you, I was loading the dumpster strategically to minimize voids and maximize the volume we got in there. 

In addition to shingles, wood and metal were mixed throughout the pile. Any wood that didn't have shingles stuck to it I burned. Other bits had to be carted to the dumpster. 

Okay, then there were BRICKS in the pile. So those got carted into the dumpster, too. Once I was done with that pile, Scott said I "could" move any other red bricks, pavers, or stones if I "wanted to." Challenge accepted. That included about 100 pavers from a patio that had to be lifted up, a load of bricks and concrete pavers from a decorative well of some sort, a stash of bricks on the side of the house, and the bricks that lined the walkway going into the house. Whew.

Trash pile gone! Nice and tidy. The stones in the picture will go along the shoreline, I think. 

Comparison view: (1) Trash Pile, origin story; (2) Trash Pile, decline; (3) Trash Pile, demise; (4) Trash Pile, afterlife.

On Friday, 9/13/2024, we got a 30-yard dumpster delivered. I went out that day and got started moving the trash pile into it. Scott was home working his real job.

The dumpster was so close to the trash pile (actually on top of some of it), that the door would not open. Our neighbor helped me clear a path so we could open the door. I worked a long day. I finished everything but the pile of roofing materials from the garage roof fix. 

Here are before shots of the pile.

Here's how it looked at the end of the day.

Here's the dumpster at the end of the day.

I also had a fire going all day. Here are the coals at the end of the day.

Scott spent a day digging, by hand, the hole for the cistern where the pump house used to be. The photo below is 30 inches down. He said he needs to go down to 104 inches. By the end of the day, he got down to about 50. He said he thinks it will take him one more day of hard digging to finish.

Scott spent another day digging (9/14/2024). We got there about 1, I think, and he dug until about 7 pm. 

He'd like to go a little deeper, so another hour or so of digging ahead.

This cistern will hold 1,700 gallons of water.

Scott took down the wall and put in the beam today. 

At the end of the day, I was a little crestfallen looking around to see our accomplishments. It didn't look commensurate with the damage done to both our bodies. I guess it is also the phenomenon of not being able to keep an accurate "before" picture in mind when looking in real time at the "after."

First, Scott removed an enormous slab of concrete with a sledgehammer. The slab used to be under the pump house he took down last weekend. When I say enormous, I mean  insanely enormous: insanely thick and insanely heavy. Normal people don't think of touching such things with their bare hands. I felt bad watching him work on it. It took so much effort. Then, after sledging chunks off, he'd load them into a wheelbarrow, cart them down to the river bank, unload them, and arrange them neatly along the shoreline.

Second, we finished gutting the bathroom and then removed all the wallboard from the walls and ceiling of the eventual kitchen. While Scott was working on the slab, I started taking the wallboard down after removing the trim and switch plates. Then he came in and did the bathroom, which included smashing a tile wall, a concrete shower pan, and a concrete floor four inches thick.

I don't have any good picture of the bathroom from the outside where you could see the 3-foot wall on the right where the tiled part of the shower was, the 2-foot wall on the right that housed the pocket door, or the pocket door. All I have are these which show the two walls but with no good idea of context or scale.

We kept the fire burning all day, and when we were exhausted and ready to go home, Scott loaded the last of the mattresses on the truck to put in the trash.

New decisions:

• The door is staying in the sunroom. 
• There will be one smaller window in the office.
• We will do a stackable washer and dryer, not side by side.
• If they'll fit nicely, I'd like cabinets in the sunroom by the table.

Scott wanted to rethink the moving of the bathroom. We decided (at first) to keep it where it is. Had we not changed our mind later, the first bedroom would have been closets and a laundry room. The second would still be our office. The entry to the bathroom would have been through the office, then the laundry. 

One other brainstorm was to think about storage under the stairs. I went looking for inspiration and found pictures like the following. 

I wanted that SO BAD. 

But Scott went back to the house and looked closely to see if the new ideas would work.  He said the stairs would be too overwhelming in the space we have and that the kitchen would be too small. In the end, we decided to stay with our previous plan, which is to keep the expanded kitchen into the bathroom and use the second bedroom for the bath/laundry combo.

Another thing we noticed when we were there yesterday was that the office has two windows, one of which looks out onto the sunroom heat pump. While the river is in the distance, it's still a pretty hideous view. So we decided to remove that window and put a couple big windows on the nature-preserve side of the house.

One new brilliant idea Scott had was to use a couple feet of the bathroom for a pantry. Here are the latest, and hopefully, final plans.

We've been rethinking a few details.

We added some closets, switched a full pantry to a cabinet pantry, put the washer/dryer combo in the bathroom, and for now, Scott has agreed to doors on the side of the house facing the river.

The pantry cabinet will surround the fridge.

Cabinets and counters will flow in a U-shape. The planning software says there is enough room; I hope so! 

Here's the new bathroom layout with the laundry. 

More views where you can see the closets. 

The office, with another view of the broom closet (door on right). The door on the left goes into the bathroom.

Another view of the office. The cabinet in the lower right is a bookshelf that is against the (invisible-in-this-picture) wall.

Here are the new doors to the river.  C'mon. This is super sweet. Oh, and a new furniture plan for the sunroom.

Views of the living room with the TV above the fireplace. The sink and flanking cabinets are showing up for some reason, but the other appliances and cabinets against the back wall are not. Maybe so we can see into the rooms.