Fun with Electricity
Ok, okokokok…so we get that I’m not the most constant of writers. However, that doesn’t mean that I’ve been slacking on the kitchen work. As promised (a month ago?!?), I’m going to talk about our fun with electrical work, and provide some photos of the horror of it all.
At this point I might mention just a few things about our home to bring my gentle reader up to speed. House was built in 1903 or 4 and electricity has been added to the house piecemeal over the years and it’s got a bit of an eclectic flavor to it. Also, last year we discovered (via a lake that had formed on our roof) that we had 3 broken roof rafters. We had to have the roof jacked up 3 inches and the rafters repaired with sister boards. We had the crew drywall the ceiling when they were finished, but not mud or tape it, as we knew this remodel was coming.
So, my darling, patient, tireless friend Sean (hi, Sean!) enthusiastically volunteered to “help” with the electricity. In the service of having everything ready to go for him, I had removed all of the cabinets and discovered that the electricity was supplied to the range hood by a line of 14/3 Romex that some fucking nutjob had trenched into the drywall behind the wall cabinets. That’s all…no conduit or chase…just chiseled out the fucking sheetrock and laid the wire right in. Smart. Very smart. I should have seen this as a harbinger of things to come…but this infernal optimism of mine works to prevent me from realizing just how big an undertaking this kitchen is.
Sean’s assistance began one evening when he came over to help me determine what all had to be done in the realm of the electrical gods. We discovered that all of the ceiling lighting in the entire house was on one circuit, and that we could simply add the two new fluorescent lights to that circuit. We also determined that the Romex trenched into the wall for the hood shared a circuit with the dishwasher and the outlet directly behind the stove. At this point our friend Dave had also come by to have a look and Sean and Dave suggested that the dishwasher should be on its own 20 AMP circuit, and that an additional 15 AMP circuit should be installed for the new outlets and the fluorescent work light above the sink. We had a plan…
You can see where this is going, right? That old hack about the best laid plans? Totally true. Sean decided we should tackle the lighting first, as it should be a pretty simple matter of installing a new switch, then running a new wire (um, or something…) through the existing box. Bwahhahahahaha. What Sean discovered in and around the existing box above the ceiling light was nothing less than pure, abject clusterfuckery. Over the course of the morning that this was all taking place, we went from expecting a 2 hour job of pulling some more wire and installing a switch to pulling down all of the drywall from the ceiling and gasping in horror at what we saw. Comically and probably as a gift from God herself, our friends Dave and Amy and Katie and Jason all popped by to borrow various tools right about the time we realized the ceiling had to come down. It was nice to have them there to commiserate. Thanks, guys. Sean spent the rest of that day and part of another fixing the insensibility lodged in the kitchen ceiling. I pretty much owe him an ovary.
About a month after that dark day, Jason and I finally got around to re-installing the drywall on the ceiling. Let me just say that two people, one of whom is rather shorter than the other, should not attempt to install drywall on a 9ft. ceiling without T-bars or cheaters if they plan to stay married. After the first (and MOST AWFUL) piece, we called Dave and Amy and the other 4 sheets went up in about 5 minutes. Thanks guys!
For the other outlets I simply pulled the Romex out of the wall and patched the hell out of that trench. We replaced the wire and decided that surface mount chases and boxes were the way to go and they went in fairly uneventfully, THANKGOD!
There are still a few things to be done, like putting the dishwasher on its own circuit and running one more box for the refrigerator…but these things are small and can be done at any time…after the mental scars from the initial shock have worn off, preferably.
At this point we have lines run for both of the 8ft. fluorescent lights, 3 additional outlets in the work area, and a line run off for the range hood. I am thrilled.
Stay tuned for an update about taping and mudding the walls…