After removing the laundry/utility room and sealing the wall, I had to move and reinstall the water heater. My original plan was to leave the water heater outside for the winter and build an insulated “shed” around it, but finally decided it would be easier to just flip the water heater to the other side of the wall into the kitchen. Looking at the patches on the backside of the drywall it looks like the water heater was in the kitchen at some point anyway, so I was just returning it home:

This is the kitchen corner where the water heater is going to go. This won’t be the permanent location, but will do for now:

We will lose the corner cabinet and a bit of counter space, but not too much:

After removing the corner cabinets (they didn’t come out easily, and in the end I had to resort to the sawzall to get them out in pieces) I cut out the drywall around the old exhaust pipe hole (squaring up the holes makes them easier to patch.) Nothing like seeing daylight through the holes in your walls:

And here’s the Hunter’s Moon seen shining through my kitchen wall:

There’s a lot of daylight coming in through the floor edges…this doesn’t bode well for sealing the cold air out, but there’s not much I can do about this right now. Correcting this will take some framing changes that I won’t get to until the major remodel in a couple of years, so for now I sprayed some spray foam insulation into the largest cracks:

I drilled a hole in the wall and moved the propane pipe, screwing it to the wall for additional stability:

I then cut the hot and cold water pipes on the outside wall, rotated them 180 degrees so they were inside, and soldered them in place:

After some patching of the drywall holes:

A little bit of sanding to smooth out the drywall and a couple coats of paint (painting now is easier than trying to paint around the water heater later) and I was able to move the water heater into place. Connecting the hot and cold water pipes and the gas line went fine, and after testing the propane line for leaks I turned on the cold water supply. After the water heater filled I lit the pilot light, and the water heater clicked on and started heating. Ah, after two weeks I get to take hot showers again:

This location for the water heater is just temporary. Next summer I am going to section off part of the back room for a utility/laundry room, and when that room is done I’ll move the water heater to its final location. For now, though, this project is