Week 12 - Electrical

This week a lot happened, but not a lot changed. Things were generally being brought up to speed for several inspections. Apparently it is more usual to NOT pass an inspection the first time. The goal seems to be to have a punch list (things to fix) that is small and simple.

One relatively easy thing for me to do was clean-up the refuse from last weeks teardown. The front door, screen door and double pane window from the living room went to The Rebuilding Center. The double hung window in the bedroom was rejected because it was single pane, aluminum framed, so I broke it down to glass and metal parts and recycled the metal. Everything else went into the trash.

First thing after cleaning was to put up plastic sheeting between the house and the new space. The weather here has been good, so I was surprised at how much difference the plastic made to the temperature inside the house. It also made a HUGE difference to the dust level. And it creates a softer ambient light in the living room. The dust helps with that as well, as long as I leave it undisturbed. Hmmmnnn.

All the work this week was carefully choreographed because everything seemed to depend on something else being finished.

First, the bathroom wall was defined and the bathroom became a real space.

The electrical started to go in, along with the phone lines, although it turned out that some of the wiring had to go into the closet walls, so they had to be built before the wiring could be finished.

It's interesting to see where they put the various wires. I will have to make a record of where they all are before things get closed in, because I'll never remember some of it.

The office closet was defined and wired. (After the fact,I should have had him put this switch/outlet on the farthest out stud, rather than the center one because having the switch 12" from the corner has made putting furniture here difficult)

The hall closet was wired as well.

One reason to keep the end result firmly in mind occurred here. Nobody told the electrician that the first 18" of the space behind this closet was part of the channel for a pocket door, so he ran his wires inside it. If I hadn't been checking the wiring against the plan, it could easily have been missed until the end of the project, when we installed the doors, and long after the drywall was up. That would have been a very expensive fix. As it was, he came back out and rerouted the wires in 15 minutes.

A new meter also went in on the side of the new office. The old one will eventually come down, once everything is switched over.

In the basement, a new panel was installed beside the old one. Nothing will be hooked up until everything passes inspection. So far it has been a painless process for me, hopefully it will continue to be so, but sooner or later they will have to shut down power to the house so that they can connect the power to the new meter, and the two panels together.

The last thing to go in inside was the bathroom plumbing, in preparation for the fixtures.

Outside, a cricket went in on the garage roof to create the proper drainage ...

... and the torchdown roof was installed, except for the corner where the scupper is supposed to go, because it didn't quite fit the hole properly.

This week I also discovered that one of the three doors I had for the hall closet was too wide to fit the space, so I took it back to Hippo Hardware, where I had gotten them all originally, and traded it in for a smaller one. I was very, VERY lucky that they still had doors of the same style and in the size I wanted. If they hadn't I would have opted for a smaller closet with only two doors.

I also, got approval from the contractor for a door that I can use as a front door. He will have it put into a jamb and the whole thing will be installed as a unit. Now I need to find hardware that will (hopefully) fit the holes already drilled in it. The better it fits, the less retrofitting I will have to do, but if you are going to use salvaged materials, it's best to stay flexible. My goal is to end up with an addition that looks good but not new. I want it to fit the style that already exists in the rest of the house and the neighborhood.

And, in the category of "things I'd rather not find" I'm keeping this electrical box, which was removed during construction. It will remind me of how easy it is to do something seriously wrong and never know it. Although it's a little hard to see, the mounting screw for this electrical box goes through the casing around the live wires. Very scary.

Week 13 - Siding 1 & Insulation