time for (the rest of the) plumbing.

My arch nemesis... this cast iron behemoth -

My ultimate weapon of choice... my trusty sawzall, armed with a Diablo diamond grit cast iron cutting blade -

Ok, so by 'ultimate' I mean it wasn't my first. Mainly because I couldn't initially imagine how I'd cut the 2" vent stack on the right in that top photo without blowing through the finished wall of our bedroom on the other side. I got lucky with the first cut on the 1-1/2" drain, where I had just used leftover metal cutting blades I had lying around. Not wise. That took a while, and a bit of muscle. But they were short, so it was easier to not cut through the wall.

So for the larger vent stack, I went a different route: I rented a pipe cutter like this bad boy for $24. It seemed that would do the trick, without any chance of blasting through the wall directly behind the pipe. But... it failed, mainly because the chain links were too big, so even opened as far as it would go and the closest link we could attached, when we levered the beast all the way shut it only begun to dig its teeth into the iron.

Bummer.

So I broke out the sawzall, and got creative. It was the angle and length of the blade I was up against, and the fact the vent stack was about an inch from the sheetrock behind it. But I realized... if I notched the framing stud and cut with the sawzall through the notch, I could keep the angle more parallel to the sheetrock - thereby, (hopefully) not cutting into it.

I gave it a shot... and, well, it worked!

That's the cast iron with the new 2" ABS attached by a Fernco flexible coupler, and the notch in the stud is where I stuck the sawzall through to cut the cast iron pipe. It still took some muscle, and I kept spraying the pipe with water to cool it down as I cut. But about fifteen minutes or so on each of the two cuts and I could take that section of cast iron and chuck it out the front door (I actually did this, onto the driveway... it was good times).

It was then a matter of cutting and glueing all the new ABS to make the new drain where I needed it.

Well, seems simple enough. But it required doing it one piece at a time, dry-fitting, measuring, cutting. Repeat. A lot. The line jutting over from the old drain to where I needed the new drain had to slope at least the standard 1/4" per linear foot, but I just took a level to it and when it wasn't level I called it good. Strapped the section above the 90º junction to the 2x4 brace and kept going.

Oh, and redo that stupid mistake I made where I used red PEX for the cold and, well, blue for the hot.

That was a dumb, dumb idea because after I cut, refitted new PEX with the right color-coding, and turned on the water it, well... leaked. One of the push-on fittings seemed to be the culprit. And it was 11 o'clock at night, so I couldn't do anything about it until morning. So that dripped all night, and bright and early the next day I ran to the store to get a fitting to find out, well... it wasn't the fitting. It was the little 3" piece of PEX pipe. So I cut a new piece, fitted it, turned back on the water and... no leaks!

Finally... the moment of truth, where I had to move the vanity into place, connect the hot and cold supplies and the drain, and find out what all leaked. Good times. My heart was racing. I fitted everything -

and turned on the faucets, then watched as the water drained... no leaks!

(The painter's tape is so we don't mar the edges moving it in and out of the bathroom)

Lastly, an experiment... To change the condenser tubing for the furnace from running out the back of the house where it had been installed to drain with the house plumbing. So I ran a length of 1-1/2" ABS off the drain up into the attic -

In the attic, I pulled the tubing from the back of the house over to this new drain stack and fitted it into the plumbing. Only time will tell if this will drain properly (it's warmer out now so the furnace isn't kicking in and the condenser isn't running as often ). If it doesn't work, I'll just seal off this extra stack and screw the tubing into the outlet at the back of the house. If it does, it'll mean we don't have to worry about it freezing every winter when it gets below 32ºF.

But regardless... the plumbing is finished! Next... clear out the bathroom to install the heated flooring element and then tile the floor before (at last) putting up walls and starting to make this space feel more like an actual room...