Second floor laundry hookups

There's going to be a tiny laundry closet across the hall from the shared bath. Previous owners/tenants kept their laundry there too.

shared bath door to left, laundry closet to right

One very small problem came up when carpenter Dan was framing out the closet: the laundry hookups ended up outside the closet doors. Our plumbers informed me that if they touched anything to do with laundry even a little (to move it inside the closet doors) they'd have to completely redo it and bring it all up to code, which would include widening the laundry drain pipe. It'd take a couple of hours, no problem. Then they quoted me 800$ for the laundry job.

I was really dragging me feet for giving them the go-ahead, but husband Dan and I both agreed it was a necessary cost and it wasn't worth shopping around different plumbers. Then in January, one of our downstairs laundry pipes started leaking. It was a teeny hole but was leaking enough that we had to shut the main water pipe off for the night and schedule an emergency plumbing appointment for the next morning. Sean the plumber came promptly in the morning and I watched him solder two little couplings right around the leak, asked a few questions, then dished over 75$. But I came away from that experience with more than a fixed leak and less 75$; I came away triumphant, fully confident that I can do that. That looked easy...

So I bought the tools: some flux, solder, a blow torch.

The Home Depot guy recommended I buy some extra couplings and just practice a bunch at first. I think I practiced once and then while Dan was gone in Monterey, CA for a conference, I went after the second floor laundry! First I shut off the water to the whole house then I ran up and down the stairs about 20 times to figure out where I'm going to move the water lines to.

Then I cut the lines

you just spin the copper pipe cutting tool around and around until the pipe breaks off

Soldering steps:
1) clean the pipe and coupling really well with the bristly cleaning tool (solder won't stick if there's finger oils or dust or paint or anything else stuck to the copper)
2) coat the inside of the coupling and the outside of the pipe with flux, which is this goopy thing that helps clean the junction and maybe the impurities melt away/evaporate off when the flux is heated? Not entirely sure, just know that it's necessary.
3) connect the coupling and the pipe, heat with blow torch until the solder melts when it touches the copper. Solder is this really pretty metal with a low melting temperature. Capillary actions draws the melted solder into the gaps between the coupling and the pipe, ensuring a water-tight junction.
4) melt enough solder so that there's a ring of solder all around the junction.

pipes go through a closet on the first floor

I know - super exciting before and after shots.

down below, I had to solder elbow couplings AND straight couplings. The whitish-silvery stuff on either end of the coupling is the solder.

up above, I soldered more straight couplings AND a washer hook-up thingy. I may have soldered the washer hook-up thingy upside down or something.

I wish I had action shots of my soldering with the blow torch and all, but everything gets super hot and there's a flame and dripping solder and you can imagine I get a little panicky and flustered. Without the actions shots, this post is rather underwhelming, I know; sorry about that. But that's that, and I saved us ~750$ or so. Yay! Now I can do (some) plumbing.