Summer's Over - AKA "The Smurf Pipe Adventure"

So it officially became Fall on Tuesday, and I recognize that my last post was around July 4th.. Where has the time gone? Well this time, I know exactly where it went. It went into an extreme bathroom makeover for the ages..

So, without further ado, (and many thanks to my Dad for his help, and my Mom for letting Rach and the kids crash at her house for the weekend!!) Our Extreme Bathroom Makeover is now complete: I will try and let the pics speak for themselves:


Post Demolition: (Complete Gutting down to studs, removing 3 layers of wall tile, and all copper plumbing from entire house.)



New Toilet, Double Switch (New one added for fan in ceiling), Wainscoting, Fixtures:



Wall Decor, Wainscoting, and Cabinetry:



New Shower Curtain, Sink, Mirror and GFCI Outlet and Wainscoting:



New 3 Panel Shower Surround, Tub and One Handled Faucet:



New Wall Hangers:



New Floor Tile:



The entire house also has new water supply lines!! I removed all the copper and ran new lines with Smurf Pipe and Shark bites.. (Enter Gargamel and fish shaped fruit snacks??). Smurf Pipe you say? So it's called Pex, but my dad calls Pex Tubing Smurf Pipe, because well, it's blue, and he's got a name for everything and so it stuck.. (It also comes in white and red, but all my cold water supply is run in blue.) Needless to say in his over 30 years of construction experience he had not seen this stuff used, so there was some chagrin as he stared up at my runs of blue/white flexible tubing. This shows how the piping can flex and be threaded through holes drilled through floor joists.. Copper doesn't really allow for this:



The connections are made via push to fit shark bite connectors which also work on copper. Crazy, I know! AND Once the connection is made, the connector can rotate on the pipe! Wickedly convenient and super cool.. Here you can see a connection made to an external faucet. In a few spots I left existing copper because of exterior faucets or hard to reach areas: Here is join of pex to copper:



So, Once it was all hooked up, the initial pressure test revealed one tiny leak, which just required me to pull that connection apart, and smooth out the end of that pipe, and reconnect...

All of this supply line work downstairs now allows for the Kitchen Remod to enter it's final phase including dishwasher installation coming in October!!!!

Until Next Time...