And no post is complete without the amusing or painful “oops” backstory.  In this case, when I bought the plywood for the shelves (back in 2008!), I hadn’t paid much attention to it.  Only after making my first cut did I notice that the grain looked unusually interesting…and suprisinging oak-like.  A quick check of the label verified that someone had slid a sheet of two-sided oak plywood into the stack of what I had meant to buy.  After I got the nerve to pull out the receipt, I learned that I had spent $60 on a single sheet!  And now we have the best-looking toilet paper shelves around…

Neat and tidy...for now!

While I was at it, I relocated our phone’s base station here, too, since it suffered from the same problems as the wi-fi.  Both are working much better than they were before.  And if you’re wondering why I did such an overkill, industrial job with the electric conduit, it’s because I scavenged about 200′ of conduit and dozens of handy boxes when my company’s office was being remodeled a few years ago.  The contractor was going to send it all of for scrap, so I grabbed as much of it as I could.  It’s been taking up space in the garage for over 3 years, so I get all excited any chance I get to pull out the conduit bender and actually get to use some of it!

Conduit and cat5, oh my!

Holes cut in flooring for supply/drain pipes for upstairs. These will get boxed in once it’s all done. Or, more likely, in the week before we put the house on the market. And no, we have no plans to do so, but how high of a priority will this be when other parts of our house are still inhabitable? I didn’t get the drain pipe all the way up to this point today, but it’ll eventually work its way towards the upstairs through this hole, along with the supply lines.

In the basement, I took out the sink, which has to be moved due to being directly in the path of where I had to run the 3″ drain for the new upstairs bath. I removed the cleanout assembly that I had put in two years ago and replaced it with a 45°fitting to allow me to connect the new drain line to the main stack. I use pieces of leftover wire to help me hold the pipes in place as I install them. I always find this to be the trickiest part…trying to get everything cut, glued and installed with the proper slope. I have to add a disclaimer that all the sloppy wiring visible in this picture was not done by me! It was a gift from the previous owner. When we eventually get around to redoing this bath, it’ll all get cleaned up!

This stairway is also the only available and feasible location for running our new plumbing for the future 1/2 bath upstairs. We’ll be running the supply and drain lines over on the right hand side of the stairwell. The bottom two treads have been removed and the holes cut into the basement, but we haven’t taken an pictures yet. These “before” pictures will have to do for now. We’ll add more soon if we have time to work on it tomorrow…