This morning at 7:00 a.m. it was the Finishing Touches concrete contractors who were hard at work under the house. Somehow sound seems to be actually amplified as it comes up through the floorboards of this old house. Apparently they had to do some removing before they were able to lay down sand and plastic. I've been surprised at the number of different contractors who work on concrete. First the general contractor had to do some concrete work. When they went to put in the new beams for the basement they had to cut out pockets in the old foundation to get them in place. Next the house movers came in and had to cut out more pockets. They also had to cut the concrete foundation out from under the fireplace chimney. It's interesting that all of these people who do concrete work do not own concrete cutting saws. They all go out and rent them. I think it's just that if they actually owned one they would end up doing all of the cutting and no one wants to have to do that. At one point the house lifter actually called in another concrete specialist who only cuts concrete. This guy took care of a good portion of the chimney foundation in under half an hour.Today the finish concrete guys showed up. They have the coolest truck ever. It has a boom with a conveyor belt that they can swing right on down into the basement. In my mind I saw these poor guys schlepping sand in wheel borrows all day long. It took them about two hours to put 6 inches of sand down over the whole floor area. If the city approves the work they've done, and the plumbing work that my brother and I did, they will pour the basement floor tomorrow. The second part of the equation is the really questionable one. I'm fairly confident that I'll be running to Lowe's later on today to purchase the right plumbing fixtures to reinstall where we put in the wrong ones. We'll see. My brother Dave knows much better than I about these plumbing things. Plumbing is complicated. It's suppose to be so easy, "poop flows downhill and payday's on Friday." Turns out not so. You have to have the pipes flowing in the right direction and they have to slope just the right amount (1/4" drop per foot of run.) And it's not just that, in addition to the flow down, there has to be a vent up. The vents have to be in just the right place, and they can not be dirty. (Bad vent, go to your room.) I don't know what a dirty vent is, I just know it's bad because my brother told me so. It took us seven and a half hours to put in the rough plumbing for the future basement bathroom and attach the temporary plumbing to the sewer pipe. Half of that time was me trying to figure out exactly where I wanted everything, and how it would all someday work out with the stairs and open spaces down there. But we figured it all out, and now are anxiously awaiting the plumbing inspector. I hope she likes what she sees. My brother told me everything we fine. Of course he told me that about the brakes on my bike in third grade about an hour before they failed on a big hill and I smashed into a fence and broke my arm. Most of the plumbing he does for me now is really just a guilt payment for that piece of bad mechanical work. So, now Dave faithfully works on my plumbing . . .but I don't let him anywhere near my car.