Plumbing 101

While most children buy their mother something nice to show their appreciation, a manicure, a nice sweater, etc, we changed all the pipes in her house in a day! Her house was built in 1947, a quaint three bedroom house in Norton Shores. The water pressure has always been a problem since the pipes were still the originals when the house was built. Metal pipes corrode and the space for water to flow gets smaller and smaller. Picture swiss cheese but brown and red buildup, it's pretty gross.

Since my sister and I are home for the week, and my dad and brother had the day off, we thought we'd surprise her and do all this while she was at work. To speak to the how incredible my mother is, my parents have been divorced since I was 8, and my dad still spent the day helping us. 

Well, he was the expert since he's done this many times. My dad taught us how to do it everything and we were his assistants. My parents built a house together when I was a kid, and my mother always tells me how she ran plumbing through the entire house while my dad did the electrical. My parents are awesome. 

My job: gluing all the CPVC pipes together. First you use the purple primer one each piece, then the cement. It's not actually glue, it creates a chemical reaction that bonds the pipes together. So interesting! I learned so much yesterday!

Each container came with the brush in it. This is the purple primer. It got everywhere! And once it gets on something, it will never come off! It takes gasoline to get it off your skin, ew.

Who knew plumbing would be so fun?!

 A corroded pipe.

Squirt coming down to check on things and get into everything. He's a bad cat. We kept shoeing him away. He didn't like the noise of cutting out the old pipes, but he'd come down every half hour to be nosey. He didn't like my rubber gloves haha.

All the pipes that we removed from the house. It was such a pain getting them out! My dad and brother were the muscle, cutting them out with an electric saw. We replaced both the hot and cold water lines. And ohmigoodness, the new water pressure is amazing!
My mom cried when she saw what we did. It was great spending a day doing something we knew she'd really appreciate. 

Now time to go thrifting. It's a rainy gross day here, perfect day for shopping! Hope you are all enjoying your week!