Electrical Work

All posts tagged Electrical Work

New Central Heat and Air

Posted by James on July 7, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , . 7 Comments

You read that right..

We replaced the entire system a couple of weeks ago.  She just died……….UGGHHH

Texas summers are pretty extreme….at least it happened before the REAL heat of the summer.

Memorial weekend we noticed that our house didn’t seem to be cooling off, and it wasn’t really that hot outside. A quick call to a repairman, and our fears were realized.

She was dead…”Worse than that…She’s dead Jim. Dead Jim, Dead” (I think that’s my first Star Trek reference)

Victor took a look at the heater and confirmed what our home inspector 2 years ago had said as well. It was cracked, burning too hot of a flame, and in general “A fire hazard that should be condemned”.

Well, there ya go ………

It had to be done, we knew it, so we just bought the bullet.

Now the kinda awesome thing, other than the complete warranty, is that they would move the air conditioner to the side of the house……instead of directly under the master bedroom window. It has always bugged me that our beautiful backyard is interrupted by a “big ol’ honking” air conditioner. We have plans for a deck that stretches across the whole back side of the house. I have been willing to sacrifice those last couple of feet because of the (completely necessary) eyesore. But Now…..Woooohhh Nelly. We can do the entire length of the house, and someday (Ahhh Someday), install french doors from the master bedroom right out onto the deck.

I know, I’m psyched about it too.

The deck probably won’t happen for a while…but this is one more step in that direction…..

Not such a great thing coming home to this in the middle of the den…

 But the guys had to install the new heater and blower….It took all day

The new unit in the back side yard, well it looks like this ….

Stunning, I know….

I need to paint all those “things” they attached to the side of the house because, well, that’s just the kind of thing that I like to do. Everything Cohesive…..

After reviewing this post, I couldn’t go another day with that unpainted crap on the side of our house……

15 minutes later……..

OK……(exhale) …I feel much better now .

Remember when this was going to be the “Year of the Master Bathroom”?

AAAhhhh, in just 4 months we……

We are tapped out….but we may still have a few small projects in the works.

Possibly Garage related……

Stay Tuned

Chucks Electrical Work

Posted by James on April 29, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , . 9 Comments

I know that y’all think that Jamie and I are pretty handy around the house. And we ARE. But there are some things better left to the professionals. Our friends are equally as talented, like our dear friend Chuck. He is a true Renaissance man and has helped us with some problems that we just couldn’t solve ourselves…..like electrical stuff.

I can wire a lamp. I can replace a ceiling fan. I can install recessed can lights, and I can even replace a switch or an outlet….usually by myself.

Chuck has helped with all the odd-ball electrical problems this house had.

He moved the garage light switch out from behind the refrigerator and into the garage. ( Behind the refrigerator???? Seriously?? )
He installed a second safety light under the eaves in the backyard…..when I just couldn’t fit in the attic. (I’m a big guy, I admit it)
And he moved a double switch in the living room over 14 inches through solid load-bearing studs.

Before…..see it there?  Behind all the bottles?

During…Chuck positioning the new box just right….

And after…..where it should have been all along…..

We finally put Chuck to the test and asked him to replace the sad little electrical panel in our garage. Not everything about updating a home is glamorous and awe-inspiring, but necessary none the less. We are trying to document every major change that we make..and this was a big change for us.

We weren’t really sure just what was wrong with the 40 year old breaker box, just that the house inspector recommended that we replace it on his inspection.

This has got to be a scary sight for any homeowner. Each of those wires matches up with a new breaker.

The new panel housing fits right over that mess of wires, and directly in-between studs.

Chucks father is a retired master electrician, and helped out on this install. I just love an electrician in overalls. Don’t you?

After a couple of  internet-less hours  and buzz words flying around, like “New Dedicated Circuit”, “Demand Load Calculation”, and “Breaker Replacement”, we finally had our brand spankin’ new electrical panel. The old one was 125 amps…this baby is 200. AND, we now have a master shut off switch on the outside of the house……something to do with city ordinances….that we now comply with.

Thanks Chuck.

She’s a Beaut’!

Luckily for everyone, there is an anal retentive living here, and he used his label maker to label all the breakers.

I’m not naming any names. But I think y’all know who he is.

A Little Under Cabinet Lighting

Posted by James on March 28, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , , , , . 5 Comments

We thought a little light under the new cabinets would be a crowning touch to our remodel.

These “puck lights” from Home Depot ( We bought white ) are meant to be plugged in, but we cut the cords and hard-wired them to a dimmer switch by the sink. Way more chic than plugging everything in like caveman.

This wasn’t easy, but very necessary. My brother Ben helped us do the wiring. Before we hung the cabinets, I ran a length of cable up each wall and into the attic. While Ben was working on connecting the lights under each cabinet, I was up in the attic….on my belly….in the insulation……twisting all three cables together. Ben made the puck light connections behind each electrical outlet, so there are no wierd mounted boxes.  I think this was just brilliant. ‘Course we did ALL this before we put up the tile.

Here’s what they look like …

Pretty Cool, Right?

Just love them, but I didn’t want to see them while we are sitting at the table. So we built trim for under each cabinet with select pine strips.

I put the chop saw to work on those 1×2’s and then gave everything a spritz with satin glaze. Remember that Ikea didn’t make trim in our birch color? This is as close to the cabinet color as I can get. I assure you, it looks way better in person than the pictures seem to reveal.

I laid everything out under each cabinet before screwing all the pieces in place. There’s nothing greater than a well-mitered corner.

When I was finished, they looked like this. Now, keep in mind that I was practically laying on the floor when I took this picture. You can hardly see the pucks from any normal angles.

Here’s a “normal” angle. I suppose this is also a pretty good shot of the new range and vent-a-hood too…More to come on those later….

Wood Wall Completed

Posted by James on February 5, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , , , , , . 61 Comments

A few of you may remember that just a couple of weeks ago I posted about my intentions of building an accent wall in our master bedroom. At said time, I may possibly have mentioned that it would be very cool to make this wall from reclaimed shipping pallets. Well ya know what? Pallets are kinda nasty. Lord knows that we tried, I filled Jamie’s new car with an alley full of them. I even spent a couple of hours in the driveway prying rusty nails out of this pile…..And what was left was really not that pretty. Not pretty at all…..Every board was a hot mess of different colors, thicknesses, smells…..etc. I know that pallet related crafts are very trendy right now, upcycling and all that, but they just didn’t have that “Modern” look that we wanted.

So we scrapped that idea and went in a slightly different direction….with new wood. 1×8 pine planks…The cheap ones, I swear. It’s the knots that make it look so AWESOME. They weren’t free like the pallets would have been, but the entire project (wood, stain, toggle screws…can’t think of anything else) was only about $125.

TAAAA DAAAA!!!! Almost looks like a picture from a catalog.

 You might recall that 2 years ago the master bedroom looked like this. Not anymore…just look at all that Spectacularness…..

It all started with those groovy 1900s Pharmacy Sconces from Restoration Hardware. They are supposed to be hardwired, and they’re heavy as hell. I’m never very excited about hard wiring a 30 pound light fixture to drywall….soooo the wood accent wall idea was born…. almost like a second headboard. A lot of people don’t know that you can put a plug on a hardwire light fixture. Just sayin’.

I first had to determine where on the side of the bed they would fit. We only had 8 feet of board width to work with. Because we didn’t want to have to cut any boards, and a 10 foot board would have been off-centered from the headboard because of that small window. The 8 foot planks gave us 18 inches of wood on either side of the bed to center our new sconces. Just enough room

RH shows them pointing down, but I think they look way better with the light on top of the fixture.

Working with the 8 foot that pine planks come in, we measured out 8 feet of wall and toggle screwed  1X4s too attach our planks to. The smaller pieces are where the lamps will be. Since they are so heavy, we added these planks to screw them into.

The only problem with that is that there isn’t a space to run the power behind the boards. After all this work, I don’t want to see a cord running down the front of our beautiful wall. So I carved a little channel into the boards and ran my power cable (actually an extension cord with the female end cut off ) through. I hot glued the hell out of it to keep it in place.  My brother teases me that my tool box is more like a “craft kit” because no handy man would use a hot-glue gun. Trust me on this one folks, it is a lifesaver sometimes. Buy a hot glue gun…the big one. I’m not sure why they even bother making the small glue guns.

We started nailing the planks from the top down, because those are really the first ones anyone will see.  This is the first time we used the nail gun since replacing the stolen one last  November. True story here, when we were in H-Depot to replace our stolen air compressor/nail gun, I complained so much about how expensive it was for both pieces…that the sales girl (Sharday – but not spelled nearly this phonetically ) offered to just give me a discontinued floor-model nail gun if I would just buy an air compressor and leave. I took her up on her offer.

Here’s that new nail gun in action….Well sort of “action”. You get the idea. To keep the boards as pristine as possible, I only shot nails in the bottoms and sides. Occasionally I would nail one on the face if it was particularly warped, but I’ll bet you can’t find any holes. The only holes are the 2 we made to run our power wires through.

I didn’t take long at all before we had this….Slight gap on the top right, and slight gap on the left bottom…..but who really even see them? You didn’t, ’till I pointed them out.

I trimmed the edges with  strips of 1×2 to frame off the wall. I notched out the bottoms to fit around the baseboard and leave just enough room for the power cord to escape.

See…

We bought 3 stains – Ebony, Jacobean, and a water-based Ebony. We were both leaning toward one of the ebonys…and wouldn’t you know it? It was the Jacobean that we both agreed on…almost immediately after testing all 3. It looked perfect against our headboard…and didn’t make the room feel like the big black box that we were dreading. Black rug, Black bed, Black dressers…etc.

It’s a little known secret of staining that if you moisten the wood first, it will absorb the stain and spread it easily. I’ll be the first to let you that the stain will go on so much smoother if you do this. Just wipe the whole mess down with a damp rag. Go on, wipe.  I know it doesn’t make much sense with an oil based stain….but for some reason it works.

So on went the oil-based Jacobean, old rag, rubber gloves, rubbed with the grain, slightly moistened wood….You get the idea.

Maybe about 15 minutes later, we had this.

Stained Wall Before Lamps 2

Breath Taking……..

We pushed the bed into place and wired the lamps with the little cords I left sticking through. I prolly need to say that these were NOT plugged in at this time. I know it seems silly, but I don’t want anyone sending me warnings about electricity safety. I know better than that, Sheesh. After all, I’m wiring light fixtures with slashed extension cords and a glue gun…..Ahhh, I think I know what I’m doing.

I wired my fixture together with wire caps AND electrical tape. The tape isn’t so much for safety, but just to keep everything attached while I cram it all into the back of my swing arm lamp. It’s a real pain to wire a fixture together then have to disassemble it because the wires came loose. There is also that ever-so-slight possibility of electrocution too.

And there we have our new lamps….. One on each side of the bed.

Restoration Hardware Pharmacy Sconce on the New Wood Wall

I build sets for a living, among numerous other talents that I have, so I gave this project a couple of hours. Far from it . We started around 10 AM, and about 10:30 that night we were struggling to get the room “Sleep-able”.  The only Home Depot trip was for stain, we bought all the lumber the day before. For time clarity, I have to also add that with the furniture out of the room this was the perfect opportunity to finish installing quarter round, the missing trim piece over my closet, and paint all the trim that wasn’t white, white.

Jamie pulled the orange jersey sheets from the cupboard and I loved the way they looked with the wall so much, that we used them for the photo shoot. “Juicy”, ain’t they?

And here’s the little guy that started the whole project…..

Finished Wood Wall with Restoration Hardware Pharmacy Sconce

We love the look of this project so much that we have been looking at other places in the house where we can  add a beautiful wood accent wall.

Of course, we could use that pile of dingy old pallet wood in the garage. Or not….

The Den “Before”

Posted by James on January 25, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , . 6 Comments

Since everyone has seen the recent pictures of our den, there have been several requests to show before shots. I’m not sure “before” is really the right word. This room took us some time, it’s more like a 2 year evolution….

Here is what the room looked like when the previous owner was still here…

Not really bad…….but, not really good either…….This room had the most furniture in it. Actually, it was the only room in the whole house with pictures hanging on the walls.

After we placed a bid, and came back for the inspection, I snapped this picture of the fireplace.

What color is that? The fireplace backs up to the garage…and the unpainted brick in there is such a beautiful creamy color. And notice that it’s GLOSS. Everything in the house was painted gloss……Get this, even the ceilings. I apologize if you have glossy ceilings in your house, but there is still time to fix it. Look at the first picture in this post, you can see the windows reflected in the ceiling.

Here’s Jamie taking care of that wierd-ass color right now……First thing he did when we got the keys.

I focused on painting the ceiling…with actual freaking ceiling paint. It only comes in flat, in case you are wondering.

The walls we painted Martha Stewart “Fawn”. They would have been an RL color, but just one month before we moved, Home Depot stopped selling RL paint. Lubbock and Tyler were the only 2 cities in Texas that still sold it. Since both of those cities are several HOURS away from Dallas …….Martha won. (under breath) reluctantly.

I love the way the black fireplace plays off the khaki.  Actually makes it look thicker and more substantial.

I haven’t  mentioned that we were powerless the first 4 days of painting. TXU forgot to put in the work order to turn our power on. We had plans to do way more painting before our furniture arrived, but could only paint during daylight.

Speaking of furniture…..This looks so sparse.

So this is probably right after the movers delivered our stuff, because we were waiting on our Pottery Barn sisal with the black banding to come in ….and that ain’t it.

The entertainment center is an even sadder sight…I had forgotten about that giant blueray player.

We kept our books and artwork in the garage so the electricians could do this easier…

And eventually this …….

That’s right, install the cans……If you don’t have them…I Highly recommend them , they are sooooo choice. I’m not sure how I have lived all these years without them. When we’re finished, they will be in every room of the house ( only 4 more to go, and 2 of those are bathrooms  ). I’m getting amazingly adequately good at installing them myself. You can see an example of that handiwork here.

I had to add this picture of the coffee table being glued together with aquarium glue. We had to take it apart to move it here. It was really the last major project in this room …..

So there y’all have it  …..the evolution of our den. Check out the finished room here.

Fixing the Hole in the Ceiling

Posted by James on January 14, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , , . 6 Comments

So I traced the hole template where the can was SUPPOSED to go on the ceiling. And used my drywall saw to cut a perfect hole……the trick here is to keep the circle of drywall that falls from the hole……

Then I disconnected the can light and reconnected it in the proper place…pretty easy, since I have plenty of experience installing these things by now.

Then on to patching the old hole….since it has been established that I never throw anything away.. I grabbed a scrap piece of cedar from the garage and slipped it into the ceiling…attaching it to the drywall on either side of the hole with drywall screws ( have to make sure my screws are just slightly below the surface so I can skim over them. )

OK, remember that circle of drywall I saved a minute ago? Well, it gets screwed directly into the board that is right through the opening…..how easy is this?

I use spackle that starts out pink……

and dries to white…spackle, dry, light sanding, and over again spackle, dry, light sanding…..

The last step is a small skimming of joint compound…sanding…then ceiling paint. Finished……

I’ve never seen anyone use a scrap piece of wood to patch drywall before ..But apparently, this is how it’s done. It’s brilliantly simple. OOOH yeah, the ceiling paint totally covered that nasty smudge in the upper right as well.

Game Over

Can Lights in the Living Room

Posted by James on January 12, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , . 3 Comments

Jamie and I got a lot of H-Depot gift cards for Christmas.  I mean,  A LOT. And that’s not a problem. Far from one…..In fact, we were so excited that we couldn’t decide what to get first. My first impulse was power tools…..I NEED a table saw…and I NEED an impact driver. If you haven’t heard of an impact driver…it’s kind of a cross between a drill and an electric hammer…… and who doesn’t need one of those ? Absolutely love them.

Well…..we didn’t get either … 

We invested in can lights,,,, I’d forgotten just how pricey they were. 20 bucks a can …and 10 bucks a light bulb. It adds up fast.

We’ve put them in almost every room of the house so far, I can count 23 off the top of my head. But we kept skipping the first room in the house.

Here’s a shot of the living room ceiling ( technically the dining room, but who needs one of those ) before ….

It’s really a pretty easy process, since I tapped into the lights in the entry. All I had to do was make sure the new cans were positioned between ceiling studs…..After what I thought was a carefull measuring,  I poked holes in the drywall with a screwdriver and inserted pieces of cable, then scooted up into the attic to see if the wires were between studs.

 

They WERE perfectly between the studs……( huge sigh of relief ) …….so I cut holes with a drywall saw … it looks like a bread knife with really jagged teeth. Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly  lazy, I just use a steak knife. Anyhoo, after a little sawing and a large rain of dust and insulation..I had 4 perfect holes, and after a quick wire twisting ( white on white, black on black ) the whole unit slid right up into the hole and was ready to go ……

 

In almost no time at all ( well maybe 2 hours ) I had 4 of these….Thrilled , THRILLED I tell you!!

 

And here’s what it looks like with no flash and just the warm glow of the new cans …….AHHHHH, ….BASK

Now there is a can in each corner of the room to highlight all the assorted “knickknacks” …YEAH.

Perfect….

Well, maybe not exactly perfect………I had to jinx the whole process and say, “This is going so easy “….bad luck every time. While we were enjoying the finished product…..there was something……just…… not …..right ….

OOH GOD!!!…..One of them was off by a FOOT….a whole FREAKING FOOT!!! I cut the wrong hole in the ceiling ……

( so check the next post and I’ll show you how I fixed it )

They’re Here ! They’re Here !

Posted by James on January 9, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , , , . 2 Comments

About a week ago I ordered 2 of these from The Restoration Hardware….

And today they arrived. “The 1900’s Pharmacy Sconce”…Wow! is all I can say

Now everyone knows that I am NOT an impulse shopper. FAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRR from it. In fact, there have been several times that I have had to think about a purchase for so long that whatever the Hell I was planning on buying in the first place is long sold out by the time I decide to just buy it . Especially if that particular item is on sale…..

But not this time…I have been watching these lamps for years ….

And I got them!

50% off even  ..and ….wait for it ….another 10% ( which sealed the deal and just about covered the shipping  )  

The Restoration Hardware is certainly one of my favorite stores…..but the Good Lord knows I can only shop there during extreme sales. I was a tad bit hesitant because they are NON-refundable. But no worries at all…I Love, Love, Love them ……..They are even more chunky and industrial looking in person.

“And just what do I plan to do with these lamps?” you ask,

Simple, either side of the bed in the master bedroom…but it gets WWWAAAYYY better than that ..

I’m also doing a reclaimed wood wall behind the headboard…. This is something I have been wanting to do for years. And now I have the vision.

Here’s the wall I found on Pinterest that totally inspires me ….. 

Pretty Groovy? Right ? That headboard is pretty close to our bed. Same color and height …..

Look closely…Can you tell where this wood came from? Can you?….Need a hint?

That whole wall is made from reclaimed shipping pallets. Shipping Pallets! They’ve just had all the nails pulled and a light sanding. That’s it! Can you belive this? Now I am all about turning trash into treasure…I have been dumpster diving since I was a toddler and I see these things just laying in alleys all the time. Have you ever bought one?…they are only about 3 bucks each.

Since I’m not doing the entire wall, just a strip up the back of the headboard and enough on either side of the bed for a rockin’ly cool pharmacy sconce… I shouldn’t need that much wood at all.

We have a 3 day holiday weekend this weekend, and because I have been a good boy and completely taken down, packed, and labeled every piece of holiday decor in the house (anyone who knows me …knows that this usually happens around March 15th) ……. I should have plenty of time to do this little project.

So stay tuned ………