Now that everything is cleaned up, we went and updated the plumbing and electrics.

Every bathroom needs it’s own 20 Amp circuit, so the electrician ran a new wire down to the panel in the basement, and replaced all the wiring to the bathroom. We installed a new fan and light combination, which is ducted through the attic to the outside.

In renovations, things that aren’t planned for do happen. A defective fitting on one of the new shower valve stops leaked ..read more

Progress report on bathroom renovation Part 1

My customer’s bathroom is now gutted, but the cleanup is far from over. While the gutting crew was amazing, cleaning up is a lot of work. They aren’t too careful on de-nailing, so that ‘s the first thing to do. It’s not fun to keep getting caught on old nails and pieces of old wire lath. This bathroom tile was an old mud job, so there were little shirt and hand ripping remnants of wire lath left behind. The mud ..read more

Testimonial

Hey, it’s blowing my own horn a bit, but I recieved a nice testimonial from a customer I’ve had for 30 or so years and I wanted to share it.

This is from Rona from Cambridge:

“Dennis Foley has helped me renovate a small Queen Anne house in North Cambridge over the past thirty years.  He has installed garbage disposals and dishwashers; he has gutted and rebuilt the kitchen, two bathrooms, and assorted other rooms; he has replaced hot water tanks and ..read more

Bathroom Remodeling That Lasts (part one)

We’ve been doing a lot of complete bathroom renovations the last few months, so I wanted to write about what it is we are doing.

First there’s the issue of protection. We live in an area where most of the houses are old, and have been remodeled at least once, so there can be a lot of layers of bathroom to remove. And remove we do. We take it all, right down to the studs and subfloor, or floor joists. If ..read more

Condo living

This may not be just a plumbing issue, but before you go out and buy a condominium, or if you already own one, here are a few of our stories about condo living. Caveat emptor!!

Let me tell you a few stories.

We went to look at a leaking waste pipe in  the basement of one condo, it was a converted two family house, so there were only two units. The leak was in an old cast iron drain that served both ..read more

It’s time to talk about money

In previous blogs I’ve covered  some of the many technical topics that I can comment on, and I’ll do more of that in the future. I’ve talked about low flow toilets that flush, sump pumps that pump and super efficient oil fired boilers. I’ll have more to say about gas boilers, water heaters, and many other plumbing and heating related topics and products, but right now I’d like to talk about money!

Dennis Foley Plumbing is a flat rate plumbing contractor. ..read more