You may have heard of the famed magician Houdini, but did you know magicians don't always ply their trade on stage? My home appears to have been repaired by such a master of the craft of illusion and confusion, and I've dubbed him "The Great Whydini!"
Anyway, master bathroom's drains are old cast iron and broke between the kitchen stack and shower, making an awful mess I'll need to tear up the whole bathroom for to repair. At this point I've made a temporary repair, so life can otherwise go on.
The water lines are somewhat like the London tube: Confusing, hodge-podge, in the way of other mechanical systems, and mostly quite old and needing replacing. I'll tend to those in time, but for now it's best to ignore it. First, lets work above floor level for a while. Here's one of my own repairs from about a year ago:
The Great Whydini installed a 12" offset toilet into a 10" space, and to gain the needed 2" for the tank to not bump the wall he simply removed that part of the wall. Last year I replaced that commode with the correct one, but the old one always rocked a bit on the uneven tile (Whydini was a magician, not a tile man after all). My dad's old plumbing trick for correcting this has always been bedding the toilet base in grout to allow the grout to form a good mating surface between floor and toilet. I did just that, thinking I'd have to break the toilet to get it up for replacing when the day came, but lucky me, it just popped free with a shove! It also held the seal well, a relief since the original closet flange was marginal looking.
Even the grout came up without a ton of fuss, and the old shutoff valve did it's job one last time. Brass valves are best valves. Next I pulled the wall open, since there's drains needing replaced., and yanked out the sink and formerly tiled countertop. The old brass sink drain just crumbled to bits, but thankfully never leaked before.
For his next trick, Whydini made this Mustardy-nicotine yellow with gold flake formica disappear by tiling over it. Rather than making a full cabinet carcass they just built it against the drywall and stained the drywall to match the cabinet. Isn't home archaeology fun?
But here. This is what I wanted to actually show off, and why we're pulling out the entire vanity and drywall. Plumbed by ignoble illusionist, The Great Whydini! Marvel as the water lines and drain are normally run inside the wall on the right, then disappear on the left, only to reappear over by the vent stack! What work of wizardry and mystery is this! Wireless pipes?
But alas, no, The Great Whydini, as all masters of illusion, wasn't truely magical. The back of the closet to my recently-refloored bedroom hides the secrets of his marvels of plumbing prowess.
I've honestly been unable to sort out in my head what order of operations all of the weeeeird choices of plumbing and framing went into this bathroom, and obviously this bit stuck out like a sore thumb when I bought the place, so since I have to pull up so much everywhere else, I might as well get this sorted while it's all a mess anyway. It'll let me put some sheetrock over that weird not-a-door too and make that closet less crazy looking.
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