A little time off

Not much being done on the house recently. Last weekend we spent some time with Grace's folks and managed to just take it easy. I got up late, did a little work, had breakfast, then napped until almost noon. That was NICE! Before we left, though, we managed to pick up another 18 foot 2x8, and sister another joist, this time completely on our own. I've got some pics from that one, just haven't posted it yet.

This past weekend, Grace had a personal trainers' seminar in Rhode Island, so I tagged along. I snuck into a couple of sessions, and the info they were sharing was REALLY interesting. I can only imagine how good it is if I knew everything they were talking about, like Grace. She was really excited about some of the stuff she learned. When I wasn't sneaking into the seminars, I was walking around Providence, and taking pictures. Got some good shots, pared the 200+ taken down to 75 (yeah, I know, still a bunch) which I posted in the gallery.

On the house front, we're starting back up this weekend, but the First Floor project is going to be on hold for now. We still have to finish repainting the house like we started last year, and now is the time to get back to work on that. Hopefully, working together, Grace and I will make quick progress. Unlike the first floor project, stripping paint and repainting isn't rocket surgery, just takes some time and effort. I've learned how to resharpen the scrapers, too, so that'll help immensely.

Oh yeah! One more update on the house... we finally had a tile guy come in and tile the backsplash in the kitchen, and it looks GREAT. Have some pictures of that as well, just haven't posted them either.

Fan guards are there for a reason...

We've got a fan set up, circulating air around the cedar for the windows. It's an old floor fan, and the protective basket that goes around the fan blades got damaged, so I took it off. Well, just in case you were curious, those guards really do make a fan safer. I've managed to get my hand whacked by fan blades twice this weekend, and both times drew quite a bit of blood.

Also, despite working (very carefully) inside the main circuit breaker panel to run new circuits, I managed to get a "tickle" from the fan motor when I reached to switch it off.

Like Dad taught me, "once you don't respect this, it'll kill ya". I guess I respect the circuit panel just a little bit more than this silly little fan. Both can still hurt, though, so be careful when you're working with stuff, even if it's not quite mortal danger.

This weekend, electrical work.

With the cedar for the outside casing on the windows still drying this weekend focused us on electrical work. I transferred switches from an old metal triple-gang box into a nice, new plastic quad box, ran wiring for the light in the dining room, and moved the location of the smoke alarm.

The quad box comes from our plan for the wiring. Two switches control lights in the kitchen, because there's no room for them by the kitchen doorway. Then, we have one switch for the chandelier over the dining room table, and one which will control the lights on the stairs to the second floor. The wiring for the kitchen circuits is already existing, since it was all redone during the The Big Project (which is starting to seem like not such a great name because our current first floor project is also pretty darn big) but I had to transfer it out of the nasty old metal box. The wiring for the dining room was all removed during demolition, so that's all new, and I'm also taking the opportunity to split the first floor into a 20-amp circuit for outlets and a separate 15 amp circuit for lights.

While we've got the ceiling off, I'm also going to redo the circuits for the second floor, and I got a start on that one, replacing fifteen feet of cable with 6 feet of new cable. For some reason, the old wire ran several feet out of the way, extending the length of cable needed. Very odd.

The nicest part is having a real light in the dining room area. It lights the area up far better than the 100W floor lamp we've been using.