Electrical Progress. And curtains (again).

After a grueling weekend, more electrical rewiring work has been accomplished! The living room outlets are finished, and the ceiling lights are on their way. We won't be seeing the electrician for 3 more weeks, so that gives me time track down cloth-covered lamp wire to rewire the two chandeliers before they go back up. We also have to find an outside porch light (leaning towards a hanging light, which seems a bit harder to find).

We also have to track down some brown modular cable/phone/ethernet jacks (going to put 4 jacks in each single-gang spot). I figure we may as well wire up the house since we're already having so much fun.

We'd like to get another floorlamp to match the old one we already have, which also needs rewiring (go figure!).

It's nice to see the progress; after the living room lights are done, there only remains the bedroom and bathroom!

I tried re-using the old cover plates, but the stuck out from the wall a bit, leaving a gap between the plate and the wall. So I got some antique bronze metal plates from the hardware store. Normally I wouldn't spend money on such a thing, but they do really look nice compared to shiny platic plain brown (our old plates had a ridged pattern but we didn't have enough since we installed so many new outlets).

Yesterday I went to Hancock Fabrics to get some fabric for a footstool (ratty secondhand store find that we're going to make match the new huge Mama's chair). I couldn't help but get some fabric for curtains, and a new curtain rod, and clips. I didn't think the wife would go for it, but she really loved it. The red wasn't working in our space. I could even leave the wall color alone at this point, too. I also picked up a 24x48" canvas using one of those Michael's 50% off coupons, so it only cost $10. That's going to go in the living room, in the huge expanse of blank over the TV. I also have to get cracking on starting what will end up being 4 18"-square paintings for the baby's room.

Close-up of the pattern. Groovy art nouveau!

Slow but steady electrical progress

We're making some progress on the rewiring. The electrician was out this weekend to do some work, but was rather late both days so he didn't get all that much work done. Actually, only a two lights -- in the nook and entry -- got rewired (and the nook light had already been wired, he just put up the light fixture in place of the temporary light fixture). We're still without light in the kitchen. I had hoped the kitchen would finally be finished, and the work would move on to the dining room. So, before he arrived, I cut out holes in the dining room for the new outlets and removed the old outlets. Such optimism! Removing the old outlets is much nastier than cutting in new ones. In our place, the outlets are surrounded by and screwed into wood. Not wall studs, but just wood. It makes it very difficult to remove the outlets, and then there's the task of removing the wood that's in the way of putting in a new box.

With plaster walls attached to metal lath, there really isn't a way to figure out where the wall studs are before going into the wall. After hitting one stud on my first new outlet, I figured out that I could make a small hole and feel around for obstructions before cutting out the entire outlet hole and then looking. Clever! (Some things come pretty slowly to me, like tying shoes). On all the new holes (except the first) I managed to miss wall studs by only an inch or two. It is nice though to know where they are, so if we want to put up shelves, we know where to attach them.

Lots of chiseling and wire snipping later, we've got a start.

Running the wire is also a pain, but not nearly as bad as the kitchen wire was. (The kitchen wire had to be run up from the basement to outlets at counter height, whereas the dining room outlets are all close to the ground). I had to drill a lot of holes in the joists in the basement to run the wire through. I had a drill bit designed for the purpose, but it didn't do the job all too well. I had a 'Speedbore' which also didn't do such a great job. Finally I bought a monstrous-looking bit designed for wood and metal, which really ate through the wood. Our problem I think might be that the wood is so old and tough, a normal wood boring bit might not be tough enough, having been designed for fresher wood.

Pictured: my beloved Bosch drill, holding the super bit that works. On the left is a thin, foot-long bit I used to drill downwards from inside the outlet holes so I could locate where exactly in the basement to drill upwards to run the wire. Second from left is the typical wood-boring bit. Second from the right is the Speedbore Max' bit.

In my aggravation while doing all this (grumbling "It's not my job!" most of the time -- this is why we hired an electrician in the first place) I ripped out the old knobs and tubes that were just sitting there empty in the basement. It looks like they even had special double-headed nails to hold the suckers in.

The knob-and-tube, which once ran the entire length of the basement, is nearly gone. There's more in the attic, but that's on its way out too. And, of course, its buddy, the cracking cloth-covered romex which circled the basement but now circles the waste bin.

The plan is to have the dining room and living room done this weekend. So, I've got to cut out the living room outlets. The living room had one plug on the plug circuit, while the rest are on the lighting circuit. That room will be more challenging since the existing wires don't run up from the basement like all the other rooms, but instead run down from the attic, even to the outlets. I avoid the attic if I can, since there's no floor up there, but lots of nasty insulation. Got a feeling I'll be spending some serious time up there soon.

We made one design change this week. The electrician pushed us to get white outlets and switches, which is fine. But now we think they might look too strange in the living and dining rooms, where they have always been brown. Brown goes with the woodwork too. So I bought a slew of brown outlets and a few switches, heavy-duty ones, and they cost no more than the white variety. We strayed from the brown since he told us they cost more and were so hard to find. Not at all, one just has to look at the dusty bin on the very bottom of the receptacle display at Lowe's. Now we can reuse our patterned brown switch and outlet covers. We should have enough left over from the entire house to do both front rooms. The bedrooms, kitchen and bath will all have white plugs and switches, which is fine. Hooray for brown!

Interior paint color advice?

We cannot agree on what to do with the living room and dining room. Right now they're both painted a light beige with a hint of yellow (that's what the prior owners painted the whole house in before selling it). Right now you can't tell the dining room is a dining room since at the moment it's the throw-everything-on-the-table room. And half the dining room serves as my office.

I was thinking of using red for one of the rooms. I like red. Maybe a brighter yellow, or chocolate for the other. But Mrs. B. isn't so keen on red, and isn't enthusiastic about painting the two rooms different colors since they're so visible to each other. I can see that. The blue rug in the living room is going to go (it was left here but it serves the function for now). And should the rooms be two different colors, what color to paint the underside of the arch in between?

I really like what these people did in their house, but I'm afraid it might look so great for them because they've got the fancy ceiling beams and other goodies that we don't have.

A little rant. I went to a few home improvement stores to check out paint swatches and pictures of interiors, and almost all the interior pics showed rooms with painted-over trimwork. A bit annoying for those that have unpainted trim, since the paint might look a lot different against wood rather than white trim.

I think I might write to Trading Spaces. One of the designers is actually from my little town, and my sister-in-law could use some designing in her house too. We'll see!