More Plumbing and the Pantry

I think we're wrapping up the 6th week of the renovation at this point- but I'm starting to lose track. The contractors haven't made huge progress recently. We get the impression that our contractors have a couple other projects they are working on, so the team wasn't at our house for most of last week. Here's what they've been up to:

In the Basement
The plumbers continued to work in the basement, expanding the trench in the floor to connect to a drainage pipe below. They've now filled that hole back in, and made new ones for the bathroom shower drain and the kitchen sink drain. They also finished connecting new pipes for the basement bathroom shower and sink, which means all the old galvanized stuff is gone, and all the remaining pipes will be hidden out of sight, in the ceiling and walls. The framers fixed our termite damage by adding new floor joists and connecting them to the old boards. They also framed in the bathroom walls, which we were planning to do, but they did anyway.

big trench for washer/dryer drain is closed back up

 

new pipes running through the basement

 

basement ceiling joists - new lumber next to old termite-damaged ones

 

basement bathroom- the new hole for the shower drain & newly framed walls

basement bathroom - looking at the new vanity from the shower

On the First Floor
They finished demolition of the pantry, and began framing it in. There is a new support beam to hold the weight of the wall, and a wall to separate the mudroom from the half bath, with space for a new pocket door. They also framed in the ceiling and floor so that they will be level with the kitchen.  Plumbing is coming through the floor for the new half bath and to supply the master bath, which will eventually be above it.

kitchen- old pantry door is framed over & closed up

 

new plumbing in half bath

framing in new mudroom

 

current view of the back of house with scaffolding

On the Second Floor
They started prepping for the new washer/dryer upstairs by running pipes up from the basement, through a few holes in walls on the first floor.

pipes coming up from the basement, heading up to the new washer/dryer upstairs

Most Annoying Thing So Far
So living without laundry is still a really big deal and major inconvenience, as is having a team of workers in the house at 8 am every day. But this week, the most annoying aspect was the lack of information. Our contractors aren't great at keeping us informed on what's going on, and that's starting to be really annoying. We don't know when the team will show up, which means I don't know if I need to corral the cats or not each morning. Since they work some Saturdays but not all Saturdays, we don't know if we can plan to do work down there in advance.  It also means we're surprised when we come home and see work that has been done, before we had finalized decisions on how we wanted something done, or whether to do it at all.

When you do projects yourself, you have complete control of the budget and schedule. I'm starting to miss that, and feeling annoyed by being completely clueless about what's happening in my house. I think we've crossed a line from being excited about the project to being really ready for it to be done.

Next Steps
We are coming to the end of the plumbing. Our windows arrived and will go in next. Then we'll have inspections.