Downstairs Bathroom - Day #2
Yesterday we decided to trek out to Bluffton for some lunch, to get some stuff from walmart (Sabs made cupcakes!), and I decided to stop in at Lowes' and get the things necessary for the floor of the bathroom.
So this morning Entrecard was acting up so I thought "bah, I'll just work on the bathroom". I tore up all the rotten flooring, which I smashed through effortlessly with a sledgehammer - the three adjacent layers of linoleum put up the most resistance. We put down some new plywood flooring, cut the holes for the toilet flange and the floor drain, and then started on plumbing.
The plumbing took far longer than expected. It was the first time in about 2 years I'd crawled around in that particular part of the crawlspace, and now I remembered why I'd been putting off this stuff. Dead spiders everywhere (we bug-bomb the basement every couple of months to keep things down there dead), and enough cob webs I probably could have stuffed a pillow with what I'd gathered up on a stick.
After several hours with Sabs helping me though, I managed to get it all hooked up and the 4" pipe graded all the right way (which was tricky because it had to make a U-turn around part of the foundation to reach the drain). The reason the original bathroom failed was that the three-inch pipe was graded backwards and so the water backed up and froze in winter.
Larry (Sabriena's grandfather) can't make it up the stairs when he's got to go, so we needed a bathroom for him downstairs, so I got a wax ring and just sat the old toilet on the floor. It's a disgusting mess, I tried cleaning it but I don't think that scum is going to come off. If I had a pressure washer I would have just taken the thing outside and sprayed it, but alas I don't.
Our plan is to buy a new elongated bowl toilet for upstairs, and bring that toilet downstairs. Then eventually, we'll buy an elongated bowl raised toilet for Larry to use.
The linoleum's glued and rolled, but I let it go up the walls a little bit because I'm really not sure what to do with it. My plan is to make it easier for Larry to bathe (at the moment he has to trek upstairs with assistance, and step over the tub into the shower up there) by just having a shower stall with a drain in the floor. The floor is graded to the back left corner, where there's a drain (which isn't shown, it's hidden by an extra sheet of plywood). I'm going to hook up a shower fixture on the wall and just suspend a shower curtain around that corner.
I'm not sure if I can put linoleum on the wall or not (heck, I'm not even sure if I want to, I think it'll look tacky) or I might just tile the wall with the cement sheeting over the linoleum, then grout or caulk it to the floor to make the entire room waterproof to the drain. I also have to do under the sink too. All we really needed at the moment was a toilet though, and that's what we have. 
Downstairs Bathroom Progress
Well I am by no means satisfied with the upstairs bathroom, but it's usable so in the interests of utility, that will have to suffice for now. It has linoleum on the floor, the tub is in with a wall on the open end of it for the shower hookups, the shower parts are in and the toilet is plumbed.
So now, we must turn our attention to the downstairs bathroom. It hasn't seen running water since the pipe-bursting affair of 2007, and the drainage pipes are getting a little slow so it's time to re-do it.
Our plans for the downstairs bathroom don't include the tub, which sucks because it's (well, it was) a pretty good metal unit. Since the only person who will really be bathing downstairs will be Sabriena's disabled grandfather, we're just going to put a floor drain in and a shower curtain up so there's nothing for him to trip on.
With the tub gone, he'll have plenty of room to maneuver in and out without straddling the edge of the bathtub. The tub has unfortunately seen better days - we cut it up convincing it to come out, and we'll probably take it to the scrapyard to help offset the costs of new hardware...
...which will be many. We already have all the new drain pipe, as well as all the new PEX pressure line for cold water (phase 1 is getting the toilet flushing so we can use it instead of running upstairs holding our respective personal areas), but unfortunately once we got the tub out it became apparent that the floor under it had succumbed to water damage - it'll need tearing out and replacing.
The room is also rampant with mold, because of the former owner's insane choices of materials for the bathroom (laminated particle board and moisture generally don't mix), so I will be removing a lot of material from it in the next day or so.
So at the end of day 1 we're about half way through the demolition - the hardest part was getting that damn tub out.
Kittens! *sparkle*
Our town (it's an incorporated city, but it only has ~1800 people, so I feel silly calling it a city) has a collossal stray cat problem - if you ever want a cute kitten, just drive out here and scoop one up. At any one time there might be 6 or 7 stray cats in our back yard. I would take them to the ASCPA, but the shelter is full and adoption rates are so low it's a virtual death sentence... I feel they're better off eeking out a living in our neighborhood than sitting in a cage somewhere awaiting euthanasia.
Well there's a few cats out there that we have soft spots for... we have too many cats ourselves, or we'd probably just bring them inside. So my wife goes and puts some food out for them here and there, and as long as they cooperate and don't run the cats we like out, cats are welcome to stay in our enclosed patio (that even has a cat door). Well one of the cats we like (nicknamed "Teeny" by us, but the neighbor christened her "Princess") had kittens out there, and then she took them out somewhere (we heard them in the garden for a little while), then they disappeared - we just assumed they'd died somewhere.
So this evening I was taking the garbage out, I open the front door, and "OMFG HI" there's two kittens sitting at the front door. Tomorrow when it's nice and bright out, I'll take photos of them.
We're thinking about just biting the bullet and taking the female cats we like in to get spayed, in the hopes of curbing the stray problem at least a little. We're just not sure how old the kittens need to be before Teeny can get spayed.
