Because the kitchen is almost finished

André, Thomas and I were worried that our renovations might actually come to an end some day, so we asked the City of Ottawa to help us out by replacing our water intake line which is a) 100 years old and b) made of lead. The city has a great program where they split the cost of this with the homeowner so we put in a request several months ago. After a few visits to confirm that our pipe was, indeed, lead, an inspector told us that a crew would come out at the end of October. He suggested removing about half of the hydrangeas in front of our porch and told us the City would give us about 2 days notice.

Halloween came and went - we dutifully removed 3 hydrangeas and some of the lattice at the bottom of the porch. No workmen. We waited. I called & was assured they were coming "soon". And then they came with no notice whatsoever; within minutes of their arrival removing 3 hydrangeas seemed, well, insufficient.

That's the view from our porch across the street. It was pretty impressive.

The next two pictures are what was formerly our front lawn. (In the picture on the left you can just see the floor of the porch.) On Thursday, these guys pleasantly and efficiently turned our yard into a 10-foot hole. Thomas and I watched the backhoe working for hours. (Thomas was fascinated - we stared out the window for a long, long time, watching the backhoe pick the dirt up, pull up, swing around and dump it out. Too bad I couldn't get a picture of him looking out the window.)


















Here's what our house looked like as they worked. You can only imagine that the neighbours were thrilled - especially given that the workmen started at 7am and more or less blocked the street off for two days.

Ok, the next one is admittedly not the world's best picture, but you can see the guy in the hole, which gives you a sense of how deep it was.Miraculously (to me anyway), by the end of the day Thursday they had completely re-filled that hole & tamped most of the earth back in. Of course, they had also cut off our sewer (with virtually no warning, I might add, though they thought 30 minutes was plenty of notice). Poor André had to go to work with no shower before the plumber came Friday morning - which was just as well since the plumber turned the water off at 8:30 & didn't re-attach the water or the sewer until around 1:00. Yikes.

On Friday, the guys showed up and dug an even DEEPER hole in our street so they could give us a new sewer, too. (Turns out our sewer was also 100 years old and made of clay tile. Hmmm.) Look at the poor sucker who had to go searching for the sewer main. Personally, I liked how all the other guys stood around and watched him...

And, below, you can see our brand-spanking new sewer pipe (running across the bottom of the chasm) - as well as the water main (which runs horizontally across where the sewer goes into the earth). The water main itself is cast iron and dates from 1898. Wow.

Finally, without further ado, the backhoe filled the hole up and tamped the earth down. Then some other machines were brought out and badda-boom badda-bing, we had asphalt and the street was patched. Now all we're left with is a war zone for a yard, but hey, we've got a nifty copper water pipe & a brand new sewer - hooray!