This Old House: Pipedreams

A rather grimy theme seems to be developing.  I had high ambitions for the March Break but I ended up putting in a new toilet on one day and then on the next (I'm tempted to say, in imitation of Oscar Wilde, "taking it out again") fixing some decrepit plumbing. I did not photograph it in situ, but here's what I cut out:
It was a tangled mess of connectors and valves,
one of which was crumbling. The other was a leftover from the days when the washing machine was in the kitchen. The white patch is silicon tape--the thin-wall pipe was weeping, and the whole thing was about to crumble away. I put in a full-flow ball valve, replacing a metre of pipe in the process; the right-angle joint covered in verdigris in the foreground is where the old line meets the new.  Well, now I can stop worrying about that particular piece deciding to burst while I'm away from home.  However, maintenance, necessary though it is, is never as satisfying as building. If a repair goes well, you end up . . . back where you started.