House Made

light switches

Beth here.

Things have been slow on the house renovation at the casa, and we’re finding that we’re kind of liking that pace. Also, our bank account seems to have this mysterious “money” in it now. It’s weird.

I’ve been taking on little projects here and there, including under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen. This picture is of the expanded light switch box I put in to accommodate the new switch. While it is not a terribly exciting picture, you can almost see how I have put in lighted switches on the middle switches that turn on lights and a regular ol’ plain switch on the one that runs the garbage disposal. This has very much reduced my dinner clean-up anxiety about whether or not I’m turning on the garbage disposal as I can never, ever remember which switch it is otherwise, and it scares me when I turn it on accidentally.

I realize there are bigger problems in the world, but not being on edge about the garbage disposal helps me to better tackle those problems. See how Light Switch UI makes the world a better place?

Beth here.

We’ve always needed more light in the bathroom, and since we’ll be putting up beadboard and a new mirror soon, now was the perfect time to run a new fixture.

As with anything electrical that happens in this house, the fire break was running right in my way, as was another random board, a stud, and a pipe.  But many holes later, a new light fixture is in residence, and the holes will all be covered up.  Or we’ll say that we’re going for a post-deconstruction style or something.  Either way.

Immediately upon having the new light, we decided we didn’t know how we ever lived without it.  Also, some people have some answering to do for letting my eyebrows get so far out of control, when clearly I didn’t know the extent of the damage. 

Maybe it was better to live in the dark.

P.S. by Merideth: Beth chose to celebrate her birthday by doing this project. No, really. When asked what she wanted to do for her special day, this was it. Dedication or insanity? I call it awesomeness. She is the number one MOST awesome chick after all.

Beth here.

Since we’ve lived in this house, we’ve never really known what the internal temperature was.  The thermostat could say 70, but sometimes it felt like 84 and other times 50.  This caused a lot of playing with the setting, attempting to just make it so we weren’t dripping with sweat or shivering in a corner, begging the dog to come cuddle and relinquish some of her heat.

All of this is a long introduction to the fact that I decided to replace the thermostat with an exciting digital model that cost about $25.  Since I always forget to take a “before” picture, here’s an approximation of what we started with:

Not so pretty.  And not so useful.

But when I took it off, here’s what was behind it.  Is this normal?  To have two wires just sticking out of the gap in drywall? 

I quickly decided I didn’t really care if it was normal to have the two wires or not.  There are times to do things correctly, and there are times to be warm.  I installed the new thermostat, and told it the times we wake up, leave for work, come home, and go to bed.  It’s like the thermostat really cared.  Here it is in all its glory, but you must ignore the patch job below:

 It was very nice to wake up to a warm house this morning.  Thank you, new thermostat.

Would you like to come visit us?  Fantastic!  Watch out for the stairs, though, because we’re still working on them.  Oh, and don’t trip over the bags of grout over there.  And shoot, did I leave the shovel out again?  Well don’t run into it and knock it over.

Now visitors can negotiate the home improvement traps we’ve set in the day OR night.  Last weekend while Merideth cursed thinset mixing, I ran some landscape lighting, predominantly using these pathway lights, and could not be more pleased with the welcoming glow they cast over the front yard.

Next is the backyard so that Dixie may negotiate her own land mines after dark.

That’s right. Hail to Habib. It’s been stuck in my head since yesterday when Habib the electrician showed up at our house EARLIER than he said he would to start working on our little electrical upgrade. We now have a new panel with new breakers. He added a circuit and gave us a full 100 amps instead of the meagre 60 with which we’ve been living. He secured the wiring coming into the house from the city that was heretofore hanging on by a rusty nail as left by the stucco guys. And he installed a shiny new 8 foot copper ground wire. So that was the must-have stuff. While he was at the must-haves, he installed 3 new exterior outlets thus paving the way for Holiday Lighting Extravaganza 2006 as well as Lovely Landscape Lighting 2006.

I’m so happy that I’m almost completely over the frustration of not being able to get anything accomplished yesterday. Turns out I need power tools to do everything on my list. Habib installing new panel = no power. But as I said, I’m psyched it’s done. Beth has already ordered our new landscape lights and picked out the transformer we want to run the low-voltage scheme from H.D. She’s sketched out the lighting concept for both the front and back yards. It will be awesome.

All of this joy brought to you by Craigslist. CL, what did we ever do before there was you? Hail to Habib he’s the one we all say hail to…

Beth here.

I want to take this opportunity to encourage all homeowners to vent their frustrations to the Internet when they are unable to find a skilled tradesman.  Expletives and/or fake expletives ($#@!) are encouraged to really get the point across.

As soon as Merideth posted about our tradesman-hiring frustration, it started raining electricians who not only will work on old houses, but have things like non-expired licenses and want to discuss other things like permits.  It was like they were all above-board and not shady.

It’s all very strange but exciting.  I don’t want to jinx it further by telling you information like we got two very competitive offers or that we hired a real live person to do some work next week.

Is there an equivalent to “break a leg,” but for electrical work?

Why can’t we get a *#&@!\  electrician to come to the house?!!!!!!!

That is all.

beth moving outlets
Originally uploaded by merideth.

EVERYTHING. Yeah. You already suspected that was the answer.

I’d planned to spend about an hour putting up the chair rail in the breakfast nook (which serves as the office as two people do not need four different places to eat) this weekend. I got the wood, spent a few minutes easing the edges so it wouldn’t look too new when installed, sanded the faces, and got all ready to install. Then I went into the nook/office and looked at the wall and remembered that the whole reason we’ve had our ghetto looking 2-tone wall for past two years is that there are two outlets right in the path of where the chair rail needs to go. (Grumble.)

So I asked Beth if she could put her projects on hold (She’s in the middle of refinishing our coffee table whose existing finish has suddenly become abhorrent to her.) and move the outlets for me. As a refresher, Beth took the electrician course at the homebuilder’s workshop and is now a rockstar at dealing with electrics.

So she got into the wall and, of course, found all manner of jankyness, weird threading, and random pieces of wood blocking all possible routes for relocating the outlets. With some problem-solving, creative use of tools and only ONE extra trip to the hardware store, she combined three messy (and might I note NOT aligned) outlets and switches into one neatly boxed arrangement that clears the chair rail. How I’ve lived without a regular light switch all this time I’ll never know. Beth rocks the most.

But that’s not even what took so long! What took so long was patching the aforementioned NOT aligned holes left vacant by the old receptacles. Siiiiigggghhh. So the end of this project has to wait until next weekend. Dammit.

“I am mad, MAD with power!” These were Beth’s words as she got in the car after her final day of electrician class on Sunday. In two 8-hour sessions, she learned, from a licensed electrician instructor, how to fix, update, alter, install, and expand services. And in which cases to just say “screw it” and move on.

So on the ride home she sums up her new knowledge on everything from the physics of electricity and why birds dont get electrocuted when they land on wires, to how we can start adding things to our 100 amp service. 100 amps is apparently standard and we should have it. Insert record screeching noise here. “Honey,” I say, “I’m pretty sure we dont have 100 amps as that was one of the things our inspector noted on our initial house inspection.” Sure enough, we get home, check the breaker box and we have 60. 60 amps! Turns out you can run all of modern life’s appliances, power tools and computers on 60 amps, but you can’t expand to add new lighting, outdoor sockets, low voltage landscape lighting, etc.

So Beth will have to wait to put her new awesomeness into action until we get an electrican to change out our circuit box and the utility company to feed us more power. But once that’s done, look out little house! Super Sparky and her faithful assistant Circuit Girl are on the case!

Added bonus: Beth’s instructor supplied her with professional grade tools including a type of lineman’s pliers that can’t be had from regular hardware stores. Nice.

new kitchen light
Originally uploaded by merideth.

Well, I came home from the grocery store to find that my awesome girl had finished painting the kitchen ceiling and installed the new light over the sink. Dear lord, we can now actually SEE WHAT WE’RE DOING in the kitchen. It’s a miracle!

Schoolhouse Electric, who made the light, makes new fixtures from original antique moulds. The quality of this thing is amazing.

And now I have to go cook for a party. I bet the food will look good with actual light on it!