Sunday I worked on the wiring upstairs, mostly because Saturday’s experience with the leveling compound scared me off of doing any “real” work. I thought I’d take it easy by trying to get some power upstairs.

Every time I wire (or plumb or do anything for that matter), I’m always adjusting my philosophies. That basically means that I do it the opposite of the way I did it the time before, because “that way sucked.” Anyway, my current mantra on electrical is to use lots of handy boxes to tie things together. So, what you’re looking at here are my two main upstairs boxes, the top for the lighting and Continue Reading »

We ran electricity out to the patio and installed our old dining room chandelier. Low wattage flicker bulbs add to the ambience, as do our new Craigslist bargain table and chairs (only $100 for the set - woo hoo!)

Julio used a conduit bender (for the wiring) for the first time, and the thought it was a lot of fun. Earlier in the year his company remodeled his office, and he was able to salvage tons of old electrical conduit and boxes. That came in handy for all the practice he needed to get it right.

Both low and high voltage wiring has been completed upstairs. I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to wiring (and maybe a few other things), so I went a little overboard on the TV and data cables. We don’t really have any intention of having a TV upstairs, but we all know it’s easier to do it now than it is to do it later. We ran coax for TV and two CAT5 cables to five different jacks spread around upstairs. They all will feed into our media box in the basement and be used to connect TV, phone and data, as necessary.

Bathroom wiring completed. Julio is an electrical engineer and has practiced on many project before, so he always feels like the wiring is the easiest part of the job.

One of the areas where we splurged was on the Simpson basement and closet doors. They make a fantastic five-paneled door that is an exact match to our existing doors in the rest of the house. More than just about anything we did, these add to the authentic feel of our remodel.

You can also see that much of the rewiring is done in this picture.

The wiring is much of the way done in this picture. Julio has a tendency to really overdo wiring and run individual circuits for just about everything. On the plus side, though, we’ve never, ever tripped a breaker in this house. You can run a table saw or air compressor in just about any room;)

Notice the black ABS pipe in the lower right side of the picture. That was the washer drain for the previous owner, and you can see the dryer’s gas valve just next to it on the floor.

Rewiring of the box beams and central fixture in the dining room. Two lessons were learned in this project:

1) Don’t take apart the box beams. When we did this for the living room, we came up with the much better method of drilling all the way up into the joist cavity and just feeding the wires through to the attic spaces upstairs.

2) Don’t permit work like this. This was the first time we ever got a building permit, and we came to regret it. The inspector was unhappy that the wires came through holes in the wood and did not terminate in a box. While I definitely believe that building codes are a good thing, there are times where the letter of the law conflicts with something that would still be safe. Obviously, very little in an old house would meet code, so any remodeling is an exercise in finding the right compromise between codes and aesthetics.

After a lot of effort, we were able to solve the problem by buying the smallest possible “pancake” boxes and painting them to match the beam stain. We were fortunate that the 3 1/2″ size was very close to the diameter of the fixtures bases, so they basically act as spacers between the fixture and the beam. If you didn’t know to look for them, you’d never notice them.

While gutting the main room upstairs, we unearthed this very strange light fixture. It had 24 little bulbs arranged in a rectangle. It had been plastered over at some point, so we never knew that it was there. And, needless to say given our other experiences in the house, it was still connected to live wires. Before this point, we had already given up on the houses’ wiring and had made the decision to rewire the whole thing. While it took a lot of time, rewiring was one of the best decisions we made during this project.

If anyone has ever seen a fixture like this or knows anything about it, we’d be interested in hearing from you. Thanks.

Rather than run a few extra feet of wire, they had sealed up this splice in the wall. While it’s doubtful that it actually would’ve caused any problems, it’s not a good practice (nor does it meet code) to seal up a splice in a wall cavity.

Although this wasn’t as bad as the wire that was routed into the bathroom plaster (and skim coated over), it was one of many finds that led us to the decision to rewire the entire house. Since wiring is one of Julio’s strong suits, it was much more of a time issue than a money one. And in the early stages of the project, time seemed infinite. Months later, that sentiment would change..