One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

It turns out that having a baby cuts into blogging time!  Although we haven’t managed to update the blog in the past six months, we have managed to work on a few projects around the house. 

When we last left off, our subfloor was complete and we were anxiously awaiting the installation of our carpet and built-ins.  After the subfloor was laid, Dave painted the walls and finished the trim work.  Lowes installed our new carpet and our basement was finally ready for use!

We found a couch from Ikea that would fit down our tiny stairwell (a common problem in many of the old houses in Toronto!)  We also installed the custom built-in cabinets we had ordered from the same person who designed our kitchen.  At this point, our basement was pretty much complete, aside from a few minor things that we decided to leave until the fall while we focussed on building a deck in the backyard. 

All throughout our renovation, we always considered ourselves lucky that we never had any major setbacks.  Well, it seems that our luck had finally run out…

Shortly after we finished the basement, here is how it looked:

Yep, that’s right.  Our beautiful, newly finished basement was all torn apart.

One morning, Dave flushed the basement toilet and it didn’t sound right.  He looked in the floor drain and noticed the water level was on the brink of flooding.  Luckily he caught it in time and we immediately stopped using water and called a plumber.  The plumber checked our drain pipes with a camera and discovered that an old clay pipe had shifted, causing a blockage. 

This is when we were really kicking ourselves.  Two years ago when we started our renovation, we replaced all the plumbing in our house, except for about 25 feet of old clay pipe under the basement floor.  At the time, it was a decision we made to save some money.  Obviously, we regret that decision now!

We could have fixed shifted pipe by just digging up a small section of the floor, however, we didn’t want to end up in this situation again down the road.

And so, the built-ins were removed, the carpet peeled back, the subfloor ripped out and the floor dug up.  The pipes were replaced, giving our house 100% new plumbing.  

Now, we’re in the “rebuilding” phase.  The subfloor is back down and the carpet installers will be here next week to re-install the carpet.  Hopefully we can show a picture of completed room soon!