Electric joy
My Dad came down to help with some electrical work for the room tonight. I made dinner for Jenny (and for me when I was finished later), then he arrived, and we busted-out the teamwork. We ran the new circuit for the A/V corner, replaced the switch for the ceiling light, and hung the chandelier. All told, we were done in an hour and a half. That’s not too bad for the mess that we have to deal with whenever we’re wiring things in the basement. Since the new circuit for the A/V corner is taking the place of an existing outlet, that meant that we were able to eliminate yet another branch from the crazy knob and tube circuit that seems to have had a solid 2/3 to 3/4 of the outlets and lights in the basement and first floor on it. This now means that all of the regular outlets in the living room are on new wiring and new receptacles, and we should have plenty of capacity there for lighting, sweepers, laptop chargers, the A/V stuff, etc. It also means that we’re closer to having all non-essential stuff moved off of that one knob and tube circuit. Of course, we still have to deal with what it powers upstairs (outlets in the front and middle bedrooms I know are on it, and probably other things as well). That will be for another day, though. There’s a good chance that the first step there will be to split-off the branch that runs upstairs and dedicate a new breaker for that part of the circuit. That alone would probably be a big help.
We were mildly amazed that, after both of us working full days, then coming home to work on the house, and getting finished as fast as we did, there were no surprises when we flipped-on the breakers and tested the circuits. It was a good feeling.
For the chandelier, the might-be-original-from-when-the-house-was-first-electrified brass ceiling cup did not want to fit with the length of the threaded nipple on the chandelier. So we take everything down and put it back up without the cup, but then realize that it looks really bad without anything, so we put the crappy brass cup that came with the chandelier (obviously not original to the piece) back on, and hung it again. This was somewhat better, but there was still about a two-inch gap between the brass cup and the ceiling, which didn’t look so great. A few old wedding invitations cut to the right width and taped together make for an excellent patterned cylinder that fills the space, though, so we’re happy. Eventually, I need to get a longer threaded nipple for the chandelier, then we can re-hang it with the older brass cup (which I think would look awesome).
After Dad left, I fixed the mis-placed crystal elements on the chandelier, hung the remaining crystals, and realized that the people who sold this to us gave us what looks like extra crystals. I can’t find a place for these on the chandelier, so they went into the “spare parts for the old house” drawer. After that was finished, I cut the carpet into strips and rolled it so that the trash people would take it, then pulled-up the padding and did the same with that, then took everything around back for garbage pickup on Friday. I swept the room with the shop vac to get most of the dust and big stuff. Tomorrow I will be pulling staples left from the padding, doing the last bit of cleaning where necessary, and hopefully starting to move some of the furniture back into the room.
We went to take some pictures tonight, but the camera battery needed to be charged. Hopefully I’ll grab some pictures tomorrow.
jonathan
