Slow Goings

Sorry we haven't updated the blog in a while.  We are having the house rewired so we haven't been able to get as much done as we would like.  They have been working on it for 3 weeks now.  They have kept a temporary outlet hooked up but that is the only power we have to work with.  So we have to drag out extension cords to do any work and put it all up when we are done because we have been trying to keep our mess out of the electricians way.

 

Last weekend, Deb worked on stripping cabinets some more in preparation of refinishing them and she also got the vent hood stripped so she can repaint it.  I spent my time building the new bar base.

 

 

Here is the bar base.  The front panel is one of the panels that was used in the wall we removed to open the room up.  We are seriously considering using one of the doors we removed on the front of the peninsula to tie it to the bar.

 

 

It has been exercise in patience waiting on the electricians to get the house rewired.  Sometimes it seems they have barely accomplished anything on a given day but we know there is a lot of stuff in the attic and crawl space being done that we don't see in our daily walk throughs.  We got home from work Thursday to find them still hard at it and could really see it starting to come together.

 

We had the light switches for the kitchen and dining room and an outlet installed in the cooktop peninsula.

 

 

I have to find an attractive way to hide the boxes and wires though.

 

Here are the track lights we chose for the dining room and living room.  We have enough LED bulbs on hand to put in two of these that are rated around 700 lumens of 5700k color, project a 60 degree angle and only use 9 watts each.  If we like them, we will be ordering enough to do the other two like these and the one that we bought for the kitchen.

 

 

Here is the placement in the living and dining rooms.  We have decided we need one more at the other end of the living room so we will be picking it up today.

 

It really is the little things that make us happy.  When we checked on the progress Wednesday night every hole in the wall through out the house had a piece or two of Romex sticking out of it.  When we stopped by Thursday evening, every one of those holes, except for in the kitchen, were wired with outlets or switches and covered.

 

We have interconnected smoke/carbon monoxide detectors in every bedroom and both hallways.  Well, we will have.  They did get the ones in the front bedrooms installed but the hallways and master bedroom still have wires hanging out of them.

 

Three of four original closets have new light fixtures with 8.5W, 2700K, 25,000 hour LED bulbs.

 

Ah, yes, the new 200 amp breaker panel was still sitting in the floor Wednesday and the hole in the wall where it was to go had about 20 runs of Romex and the main service cable hanging out of it.  It would have taken me all day just to wire this thing.

 

Here is the light switch (again, the little things) and master closet light.  That bad boy is 4 feet of 3,200 lumen, 4000k color temp brightness and has a 30,000 hour life rating.  In terms of what we have always known, it is roughly the equivalent of 4 - 60 watt light bulbs, puts off an almost a pure white light, should last 30 years and only uses 42 watts.  A florescent light would use about 80 watts.

 

 

Hopefully, the electricians will get finished next week and we can move on to construction of the new master bathroom and closet soon.  After that, we will be refinishing the floors, taking the chimney off the back of the house, replacing some of the siding and applying somewhere around 18 gallons of exterior paint we bought at Hardman Lumber Co.'s 75th anniversary sale.  They had Clark Kensington paint on a buy one get one sale so we took advantage of it.