Susanna and I have a (pretty long) list of small projects to do around the house. As well as a list of unfinished projects. Some of the unfinished projects include things like replacing the door hinges in the kitchen (I ordered new hinges a while ago) and adding lights to the garage that I bought a year ago (I only installed half of them).
One of the bigger unfinished projects was to hook up the new outlets in Will’s bedroom. I wired up four new outlets in his room when we replaced one plaster wall with drywall a year ago. I ran the wires to the attic, but didn’t run a new wire up from the basement. I wanted two full circuits on the second floor, so I didn’t tie into the outlets in Ben’s room. Will’s room had one functioning outlet so it wasn’t a crisis to finish that project. So I never did. Until today.
One of Susanna’s outstanding projects was to sand down the door the basement. She had stripped and sanded the door last year, but she was unhappy with the results.
Today we decided to tackle both projects. I think we both were tired of sitting around, stuck in the house because of the cold weather and snow (the thermometer read -8F/-22C this morning). So it seems better to be stuck inside doing projects. In the morning I helped Susanna move the basement door down to the basement to be refinished. In the afternoon, I attacked the wiring in Will’s room.
I ran a wire down from the attic to the guest room outlet, and ran a new wire up from the basement to the guest room. I finished the project by dinner time, and have eliminated all but two of the old circuits from the house (I think one of the remaining ones goes to some of the lights on the first floor – I’m not sure what the second circuit is). I didn’t curse as much as I normally do when fishing wires. But I did have to remove some plaster on the basement stairs to get the wiring run. The plaster on those stairs looks like sh*t anyway, so it isn’t a big deal.
The door is nearly done, Susanna will put the final coat of poly on tonight and we can re-install the door tomorrow morning (she put on 4-5 coats of shellac already today). And, since I’m in the mode of doing electrical work, I may add a switched light to the second floor of the barn as well as an outside light to the barn tomorrow. The real win tomorrow will be if I can convince the boys to spend time cleaning the basement tomorrow.
It feels good to knock off one of my unfinished projects.
Sorry, no pictures. I couldn’t think of any possible pictures of the wiring that anyone, including myself, would at all find interesting. And the door. Well, it is just a door. It looks like it did yesterday, just better.
