flush

Once we'd painted the office, we realized (somewhat belatedly) that there was something else we should take care of before the floors came. When we ran the plumbing for the new bathrooms, we left the original stack in place. It was cast iron, and very large. So large, in fact, that for some strange reason it stuck out of the base of the office wall. We'd notched around in when we installed the subfloors, and told the drywallers to just cut around it if they couldn't get it flush. They did so, and we realized that it really looked much worse than we thought it would:


The original plan was to just leave it, since we intended to put bookshelves in front of that area anyway. But we've been revising our bookshelf plans now that the end is in sight, and there may not be one at that exact spot. And besides, what about when we go to sell the house? Savvy buyers won't be fooled by a strategically-placed potted plant - even if I was capable of keeping one alive long enough to get the house on the market. And, more immediately, we both hated it. And we live here, and will be doing so for a while. So we called our fantastic plumber, and asked him to come out and take a look. He gave us a huge break on pricing, and replaced not only the bit in the picture, but all of the ancient cast iron pipe in the basement below for several feet straight down and an extra branch out for a price that was seriously, amazingly low. And he did it the day after I called him. (Okay, it was the day after that, but he could have done it the next day if I hadn't had to go to the office.) We had to get it done really fast because the flooring was due to be delivered, and it was no problem. He and his crew are the absolute best.

Once they'd replaced the pipe with one that would fit inside the wall all the way down, I patched the hole in the drywall. You can see the patch in the picture below - it isn't repainted yet, but you can see that not only is there no gaping hole in the wall anymore, but the flooring installers will be able to install all the way to the wall. Everybody's happy.