Electrical rough in... Complete

We finished up the electrical rough in for the kitchen/dining addition this weekend. All I have to do is run the smoke detectors, but I'll do all of them at the same time to make it easier. The last 2 pot lights were a pain, but we have to fir out this ceiling to match the new addition so we only took out enough drywall to make the lights fit. Once we get to drywall we'll take out the ugly brass light in the middle.

We'll be off from renovating the next week so after the holiday we'll tackle the plumbing and HVAC and hopefully be ready for rough in inspection by the end of July.

Subtle

We cleaned up the front yard today and did a trial run on the finish trim for the front windows. We matched the same pvc trim as the rest of the house. It's a subtle difference, but we think it makes the house look better. Now we can paint them and check them off the list completely.

Tedious work

We ran a bunch of electrical circuits under the crawl space today. There's not a ton of space down there, but it was easy enough to do. I started making up all the switches and light boxes as well. It's tedious and it makes the tips of your fingers hurt from screwing on wire-nuts and dealing with the little wires...BUT... Its a whole lot better than paying someone $14,000 to do it for us! With lights, wire, various parts, and tools we've only spent $1800 so far and I expect to be well under $3000 for the whole project.

Assuming neither of us burns the house down or electrocutes ourselves that's a nice little savings! And I would even willing to take a shock or two for it. Nothing major, but a couple little shocks would be worth $11,000 in my book.

If we only had a patio...

These lights would surely illuminate the space so well. At least I assume so since I don't have any power to actually test them nor do we have a patio of any sort.

Also featured in this picture is our new mosquito magnet or as I like to call it - the nothing magnet. While installing the lights I was bitten twice and the mosquito magnet in a week of operation has caught 1 mosquito. Maybe it's lulling them into a false sense of security and next week it's going to take them all out.

Drains and electrical rough in

Carroll and Sons finished up the drain/waste/vent rough in and I started running cables. Two guys ran all the pipes in two days.
So far I have two circuits completely wired. To make myself feel better about how much time it took, I will say they were the most complex of the circuits I have to install. A bunch of 3 way switches and all the lights are spread out on the ceiling.

Porch complete and the things we do to save money...

The crew finished the front porch this morning. They did a great job and everything looks better than we planned. We love how the white trim came out.

I rented a big jackhammer and went to town on the basement floor so we can move the main plumbing stack. Carroll and Sons plumbers will be on site Wednesday to start the drain rough ins. With everything moving we didn't feel comfortable enough getting everything to code so it's better to just hire it out. Once the concrete was broken up we had to dig down a couple feet. Not the easiest job in the world, but the plumber was going to charge us $425 to do the work and all it cost us was a $60 jackhammer rental (and a solid 4 hours of hard labor). The things we do to save a few bucks!

We also moved around some framing upstairs today. It was hot and we went through quite a few bottles of gatorade, but we got it done. Now we have a better laundry room layout and gained another small closet in the master bedroom.

Messy job

This is one of two messy jobs we have this weekend. We needed to demo the guest bedroom ceiling to run the plumbing drains for the upstairs bathrooms this week. It was dirty and we have about a ton of trash to sneak into our trash pickup the next few weeks, but its finished.

We're also tearing up the basement floor. More on that later...

No longer a safety hazard

The crew were on site to add gutters to the house and finish up trimming out the porch. I'm glad we went with the larger columns and wider stairs. The house looks almost complete from the front. They'll add the stair rails tomorrow and then its pretty much done. We'll replace the front door and landscape at some point in the fall probably. If it wasn't so hot out and we had a rocking chair I might just go hang out on the porch!

Kristin will see if she can find a way to fall off the porch when she gets home, but it seems pretty solid to me.

Electrical rough in

We've been busy perfecting the kitchen layout so we can run all the electrical and get the plumbing installed. Hopefully it won't change and all the plugs and lights are in the correct spot. We installed a sub panel in the dining room to feed the circuits in the addition and second floor.

We're hiring out the second floor hvac install and the plumbing drains so we are hoping to have a new kitchen by the end of summer!

New lights

I have half day Fridays now so I took the opportunity to check another item off the list. Previously we only had one sad little light. Now we have two that are much nicer. It was a huge pain to run electrical to the new light. Ten inches of solid wall doesn't leave much room to fish wires. It might have been a relatively small project, but it took me the better part of 4 hours. We also hung a new number plate a few weeks back. The door is still ugly, but that will change later on.