Concrete floor poured

Sonja and Eddie, Randy's sister and brother-in-law, visited the site today and reported the concrete basement floor has been poured. We don't have photos, but some neighbors sent us these pictures this past weekend. A gravel sub-base and concrete forms were in place.

Basement plumbing installed

We visited the house site on the way back from a weekend vacation in Atlanta. (Note to potential tourists: the trek through the World of Coke "museum" feels like a not-so-subtle brainwashing, but the CNN tour is cool.)

The pipes for the basement plumbing were in place and some tar and brown plastic sheeting were added to the outside of the two walls. The concrete floor wasn't poured though. The builder had said that would be done early last week.

Here are some new photos:

Claw-foot tub refinisher

I spent the morning calling claw-foot tub refinishers in Alabama and Georgia. After getting estimates of $600 to $700 per tub (our budget is $500 each and we already have $150 in one and $175 in the other), I called a company I initially thought of when I decided to put claw-foot tubs in the house. If I'd done this to begin with, I could have saved us a lot of trouble.

The business is in a borderline-dangerous outskirt of Birmingham we drive through on the way to my parents' house. A bunch of tubs that need refinishing are chained up outside the place. We stopped there a couple times awhile back, but it was the weekend and no one was there. I turned to Google and the online white pages, and when this business didn't show up in my searches for bathtub refinishers I sort of forgot about it.

Anyway, I got the owner on the phone today and he sells refinished claw-foot tubs for $530. That's the excruciating part. He must not have surveyed the competition recently. An architectural salvage company in Cullman sells them for $1,200, and that's the next cheapest price I've found. The good news was I could bring him the tubs I've already bought and he'll have them refinished for $330. That's within the $500 budget and a little less than the $530 of buying one already refinished, but saving $25 doesn't make up for the trouble of picking up the tubs, unloading them (they're HEAVY -- I fear for my fingers and toes, not to mention my back, every time I help move one) and storing them. The owner told me he doesn't refinish the tubs there; the same man has been picking them up, refinishing them and bringing them back for 20 years. He must not have raised his price in 20 years either, I thought. A refinished tub is displayed in the store and it looks really nice. I kind of feel bad the guy is doing this work so cheaply compared to everyone else, but I can't be the one to clue him in.

Next week Dad and I are going to take the tub that's at his house over there to be refinished. It won't be back for five to seven weeks, but that's not a problem given the slow progress of the house.