Back to the Bathroom!

I have been given an ultimatum by Mrs. Forest - "Finish the bathroom before school starts or I'm outahere!"  Lucky for me school starts a week after Labor Day!  Also, lucky for me "Finish" means a working tub and toilet.  The main obstacle to having working fixtures being the cracked cast iron drain pipe that was dumping water into the basement.

I had previously spent a lot of time (years) thinking about how to go about removing the pipe and the consequences of doing something wrong (causing more cracks or failing the pipe above).  Well, I finally MANNED UP yesterday and took out my trusty reciprocating saw.

I made sure that the pipe had adequate support above and planned my cut below the cracked portion of pipe.  The proximity of the pipe to the wall and the box-out sides didn't make cutting any easier and it took roughly an hour to get through or at least mostly through the pipe - the pipe cracked the rest of the way to complete the cut.

After the cut it took awhile to remove the 7ft section of pipe as the top was hung up at the connection to the new PVC above.  Plus the pipe was heavy as A$$.  I decided to try and crack the pipe into smaller pieces by hitting it with a small sledge hammer.  I was hitting it up high and it ended up cracking down low so I scrapped that idea.  The small section came out easily and the larger section came out with a little more effort.

After I got the pipe out of the way I discovered what I was hoping not to find on the remaining pipe - a large crack running down to the floor of the kitchen.  I'm fairly certain that I didn't cause this crack during removal as there is a good amount of corrosion and section loss of the pipe.

Hopefully there is enough sound section of pipe for me to connect to new PVC pipe.