Life returning to normal

"I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion."  William Shakespeare

After spending a long weekend without running water in the house (you don't realize how much you miss it until you don't have it,) I'm happy to report that our plumbing situation is on it's way to returning to a state of normalcy . . . and it's not going to bankrupt us. Our plumber was easily able to bypass the offending portion of old and rotted pipework buried in cement slab under the bathroom floor. Water now comes exclusively out of our faucets instead of seeping up through the tile work. While hot water is temporarily unavailable in the kitchen and in one of the bathrooms, the other bathroom and the washing machine have both hot and cold again. While not perfection, this is a completely livable situation for us for now.

Without going into the minutia of plumbing design, all I'll say is that the stuff installed above ground in the mid 1970s add-on of our 1956 house was done correctly (following the then-current building code) and with good materials (I can't say enough nice things about 0.75" diameter copper pipe.) This, potentially, saved us several thousands of dollars that a total house repiping could have ended up costing us. Along with an insurance settlement negotiated today and a very reasonable estimate for getting the rest of the pipework properly configured, we should have complete and functioning hot/cold plumbing - as well as a much needed brand new hot water heater - sooner than later. I'm going to sleep well tonight with that new found knowledge.

Not knowing if my house was going to be invaded on Tuesday and Wednesday with a complete plumbing crew ready to tear into my walls to install new pipe,  I took provisions to get time off work these next two days to watch it happen and witness the household monetary funds deplete accordingly. Now, instead, I can work outside in the carport (beautiful weather forecast, by the way,) at a comfortable pace and I have a certain amount of confidence that the table saw will be unearthed very soon. We're back on track, folks. Life is good.