Project 2: The Shower Project - Part 1

On Saturday, i started a project that has kind of been in progress for a while now, but kind of on hold.  Let me start it of with a brief history.

Brief History:
After we bought our house, we found out that our upstairs shower had a pretty bad leak in it.  When you showered, you would walk out into a puddle of water.  I wasn't sure what was going on with it, but i was kind of mad at first that this kind of thing didn't get found by the building inspector (which was a waste of money).  So we just kind of left it there not working and didn't really think about it because we didn't have time or money to spend on it.  So one day, i decided to take a closer look, only to find out that the entire base of the shower was cracked due to a faulty installation.  Let me back up for a second, prior to us buying this house.  This shower was purchased brand new less than a month before we bought it, and wasn't even finished getting installed until about a week or two before we closed.  So back to the story.  Basically, the person that installed the shower didn't do it correctly and cracked the base which was thus leaking water underneath the shower and out into the surrounding floor area.  I wasn't too upset about this, because i didn't like the shower and it was the cheapest shower i have ever seen.  It wasn't even made out of fiberglass, and it had a Styrofoam base.  After this, we decided to pull the shower out of the bathroom and order a new shower.  This pretty much gets you up to date

So, now I will come back to the present.

The Present:
On Saturday, I started (or re-started) working on this project of putting in a new shower.  Here is a picture:

(Shower base on left, corner for shower in 

center,toilet i installed a few months ago on right)

This picture was how my day started on Saturday.  The plan for the day, was to cut a hole in the floor to allow me to move the sewer pipe from its current location to one further out from the wall to accommodate the new shower base.  Then I was going to recover the floor and install the base for the new shower.  Sounds simple enough right?

Heres the next photo I have from the day:

What is happening?  I'll give you some hints:  2 fans, dehumidifier, pitcher, bowl, and storage container.  Can you guess?

Did you guess:  

You started your project and everything was going great.  At one point, while using a saw, you hear a small pop and the sound of spraying water, when you realized that you cut through a pipe.  You then jumped up, panicked, and ran as fast as you could down into the basement, where you attempted to shut off the water by closing 8 different valves.  At this point, you realized the water was still running, so you then rushed out to the water main to turn it off, realizing that you couldn't without a wrench.  Then you ran back inside to find a wrench, found one, and ran back out to finally turn off the water after about 1.5 minutes total time of water spraying into the downstairs ceiling/upstairs floor.

If you did, then you are correct!

The picture above was taken about 20 minutes after the ordeal when the constant stream of water had finally stopped draining from 3 holes i poked in the ceiling and the doorway into the kitchen.

As you may have guessed by now, I didn't get the shower base installed by the end of the day.  

Here's the after picture:

(At this point, I had already cleaned up the area

alot.  It was covered in wet sawdust before this.)

Here's a closeup of where the water was spraying.  This is after I fixed the pipe, and its the one furthest on the left.

And finally here's a picture of the culprit:

In a sort of ironic twist at the end of the day, I found out that I am going to have to move both of those water pipes before I can install the new shower drain, because they are in the way.