Electrical progress

I’ve been spending nearly all of my “free” time working on the wiring. I’ve come to realize the biggest hurdle (for me) with rough electrical: You do all the work on the wiring, yet there’s no outlets to plug into, no lights to switch on, etc. All that stuff has to wait until after drywall! 🙁

Anyway, here’s the progress made by room/area:

– Caira’s bedroom: Done except for termination of network/phone lines.
– Caitlin’s bedroom: Done except for running+termination of network/phone lines.
– New bathroom: Power run for lights and fan, but a fair bit of work remains to be done.
– Laundry/utility room: Done except for network/phone feed. (The patch panel will be in the utility room, so all the comm wiring terminates there.)
– Hallway: Done.
– Nook: Done.
– Kitchen: Main (fluorescent) lighting placed and temporarily wired. (*Lots* left to do!)
– Dining/game room: West wall (switches, outlets) done.
– Living room: No high voltage work, still need to run network/phone lines.
– Great room: West wall (entertainment center) wired, including speaker wires, network/phone wiring. Wall outlets done. Sconce lighting done.
– Front porch: No progress.
– Garage: Ceiling outlets (lights, garage door opener) done. Power run to GFCI outlet, but not terminated.
– Back porch: Coach lights [re-]placed. Still need to wire them and patch the walls where they were originally placed.
– Quilt shop: Floor outlets done. Outlets on west wall. Quite a bit of work remaining, but the shop is lower priority than the house at this point. (It’s a separate permit, so we don’t need to have it done at the same time as the house.)
Attic: Whole-house fan done, FAU done, power (40 A @ 220 V!) run to condenser, attic lights almost finished. Power is run for one attic fan.

The major items on the punch list are (biggest to smallest):

1. Kitchen: Can’t do much until we fur out the original east wall to line up with the new wall, but we’ll lose our remaining kitchen facilities when we do that. Thus it will probably be the last thing we tackle.
1. Quilt shop (low priority)
1. New bathroom: Run power for vanities (2 x 20 A circuits). Determine final layout of vanities, place and wire vanity lights and outlets, wire ceiling lights and exhaust fan.
1. Great room lighting: We’ll need to remove some of the old joists to make room for can lights and ceiling fan mount, then place and wire the new cans.
1. Dining/game room: New outlets and network/phone wiring in three original walls, complete with fire blocks–not fun. Replace original ceiling light box with a ceiling fan mount.
1. Garage: Need to install & wire coach lights flanking roll-up door. Waiting on installation of new personnel door for its light.
1. Front porch: Two can lights over porch, outlets for Christmas lights (with in-use weatherproof box) at peak of gable.
1. Attic: Install both attic fans, run power to second one. Finish attic lighting circuit. Test whole-house fan.

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LumberJocks web site

I was browsing [houseblogs.net][] over the weekend. [One of the members](http://blog.gizmodyne.com/) had a link that caught my eye: [LumberJocks][] is an online woodworkers community. [I joined](http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/sonicchicken) immediately, even though my own shop won’t be done for at least six months. 🙁

Sacramento County will only permit up to 50% of *current* residential space for unoccupied additions, e.g. garages and shops. Our house was originally 1090 ft2, so the max non-occupiable square footage I would be able to permit was 545 ft2. Barb’s quilt shop was only 480 ft2, so that was the shop we built first. Our addition is 1120 ft2, so once that’s done we’ll have 2210 ft2 which’ll be more than enough for a permit for my shop (768 ft2). But I can’t even apply for a permit for my shop until both the house and Barb’s quilt shop have passed final inspection.

I probably won’t be very active on LumberJocks until our remodel/addition is finished. I may lurk from time to time, but I’ve been *way* too busy working on the wiring to get involved with anything else.

[houseblogs.net]: http://www.houseblogs.net/
[LumberJocks]: http://lumberjocks.com/

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Rainwater collection

I’m already reaping the benefits of [houseblogs.net][]. One of the other families mentioned in the WSJ article referenced the story, so I decided to check their blog — Their tagline is “[Humphrey House](http://www.humphrey-house.com/) – Transforming an Arts and Crafts Bungalow into a Green Home for the Future”. (“Arts & Crafts” and “Green Home” are two major cool points right there!)

One of their recent posts is [Installing a Loopy Rain Barrel](http://tinyurl.com/346a64), which looks like an excellent project for our property. Our shop building will have about 1400 ft2 of catchment area, and it’s right next to the garden. (Unfortunately we won’t be able to take advantage of Chicago’s discounted rain barrels.) The [downspout diverter](http://tinyurl.com/32mrqh) is the slickest part of this system, and something that would be an absolute necessity in Sacramento–*lots* of rain in the winter (when we won’t need it for the garden), so once our barrel is full we’d need some automatic way to dump the excess.

[houseblogs.net]: http://www.houseblogs.net/

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Wall Street Journal article

Jennifer Saranow at the [Wall Street Journal][wsj] has an [article on home-improvement parties](http://tinyurl.com/2s8t5p). (The article will only be available for free for a week, but there’s always [Bug Me Not][] if you don’t feel like registering.) Jennifer has been interviewing me, my family, friends and our general contractor for several weeks, since she stumbled across one of my “demolition party” articles. Judging from the title of the article, (“The Three-Martini Renovation”), it looks like the focus was on drinking-and-demolishing — sounds like an excellent way to win a [Darwin Award][] to me, and certainly not something I’d permit my friends and family to engage in. My favorite line from the article:
>Don’t open the bar until the work is finished.

To which I’ll add: ***DUH!***

Something cool I learned from the article–there’s a [meta site for remodeling-related blogs][houseblogs]. My general-purpose blog here doesn’t seem to be a perfect fit, but [I’ve joined](http://tinyurl.com/29ulv4) anyway. I’ll have to play with [WordPress][] and see if I can generate a remodel-specific [Atom/RSS feed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed) for the site.

[wsj]: http://online.wsj.com/public/us
[Bug Me Not]: http://www.bugmenot.com/
[Darwin Award]: http://cgi.darwinawards.com/cgi/random.pl
[houseblogs]: http://www.houseblogs.net/
[WordPress]: http://wordpress.org/

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Remodel update, week 24

I’ve been busy working on the wiring lately, so I haven’t posted anything for a while. This turned out to be a good thing, because Don and J Moreno read my last post and hadn’t seen anything new on the blog, so they dropped by for a visit last weekend. Sorry for not sending out personal invitations to *all* of our friends/family! We really appreciate the company (and a chance to rest and chat!), so drop by any evening or weekend–More than likely, at least one of us will be home and working on the project. You can call ahead if you don’t want to take a chance on missing us…

Serious construction on our addition/remodel began on 12 April 2007, almost 24 weeks ago, although it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. (At least to me–my family may feel differently.) Our next major milestone is rough frame inspection, which includes rough electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and (since we’re getting a stucco exterior) lath inspections. Here’s how the project is going right now:

Rough plumbing is all but done. We need to connect the new water heater’s T&P valve to its drain pipe, and we need to tie the old vent pipe from the garage sink into the kitchen vent stack. There’s no plumbing in the shop, so nothing to do there.

I spent last week doing electrical wiring and made a *lot* of progress, but I didn’t quite finish. Now I’m back to working on the project during lunch and in the evenings. Even so, I hope to finish during the coming weekend. Mostly it’s just little stuff remaining: an outlet or two in one room, a few lights in another, etc. The only big electrical job remaining in the house is the kitchen, and that’s only a “big” task because I have to do some framing first. We need to add some furring strips to the old kitchen-garage wall, I have to frame in the openings for two doors that we removed, and I have to re-frame the ceiling joists where the range/hood vent will poke into the attic. After that, it’s just a matter of dropping a few dedicated electrical circuits for the microwave, range hood/blower, dishwasher, and garbage disposal.

I haven’t done much of the electrical in Barb’s quilt shop, although I did get the most difficult job done–the three floor outlets. (The worst part was snaking 12-3 Romex through the conduit. The second worst part was kneeling on the concrete to wire up 3 outlets. The third worst part was paying almost $60 *each* for the brass floor plates. “Ouch!” to all three.)

The HVAC was finished a few weeks ago. I wish I’d finished the wiring *before* all the ductwork was installed! It’s been a bit of a pain having to crawl under the ducts, whereas I used to be able to walk upright through nearly all of the attic. Live and learn, I guess…

Barb and I took our salvaged doors out to [U.S. Building Materials][usbm] last Saturday for new jambs and hinges. While we were there, we ordered our gable vents. Those should arrive next week. We’ll need to have these installed before the stucco crew can apply lath and building paper. But before we can put up the vents we’re going to have to finish sheathing the gables! We learned a few tricks when we did this on Barb’s quilt studio, so hopefully the house gables will be easier for us to knock out.

[usbm]: http://www.usbuildingmaterials.com/

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Work on the house, or spend some time on Broadway? Hmm…

Whenever I’m not at work, I’ve been spending almost all my time on the [wiring for our remodel][], but it’s been going pretty slow. (I only have about three hours each evening, and it takes me longer than a professional electrician to do the job.) It’s Friday afternoon, (yippee!), and I’m taking “vacation” next week, so when I get home tonight I’ve got **nine straight days** to work on the wiring.

But you know what they say about “all work and no play”… I just noticed that [R5 Records][] is having their grand opening tomorrow. In case you don’t know, R5 is the brainchild of Russ Solomon, founder of the now-defunct Tower Records. He’s even opening R5 in the former Tower Records location on Broadway. I’m not sure I’ll be able to resist the attraction of R5, the new [Avid Reader][] location, and the [Tower Theater][], all within yards of each other! *Plus* [Gunther’s Ice Cream][] just a few blocks away. Yum!

So I’m thinking maybe working tonight and tomorrow morning on the wiring. When it starts warming up in the afternoon, I’ll see it I can talk the family into a trip down Broadway: Hit R5’s grand opening party, check out Avid Reader, maybe catch “[2 Days in Paris](http://www.thetowertheatre.com/tower/film.asp?RadiantID=5356)” at the Tower, then head down the street for some ice cream. I’ll have to see how much electrical stuff I can crank out in the next ~24 hours…

[wiring for our remodel]: http://sonicchicken.net/blog/wordpress/tag/remodel+electrical
[R5 Records]: http://www.r5records.com/
[Avid Reader]: http://www.avidreaderbooks.com/
[Tower Theater]: http://www.thetowertheatre.com/
[Gunther’s Ice Cream]: http://www.yelp.com/biz/nJO67202TJCZJCn__VG5BA “Yelp! page for Gunther’s”

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Local sandwich shops

An [article in the Sacramento Bee](http://www.sacbee.com/103/v-print/story/343443.html) last week highlighted a couple of locally-owned sandwich shops:

* [The Sandwich Spot][] at [1630 18th St](http://tinyurl.com/2g3vag)
* [Dad’s][] at [1310 S St](http://tinyurl.com/2p6fty)

[The Sandwich Spot]: http://www.thesandwichspot.com/
[Dad’s]: http://www.eatatdads.com/index.swf

I haven’t been to either place yet, but I wanted to get the information up here so I’ll remember to check them out.

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The average home, then and now…

A recent article at [LJUrban][] gives a pair of data points on the [average home size](http://www.ljurban.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry070830-005122) in the US. One of the cool things about our home–it was exactly the average size (1050 square ft) for single-family detached homes when it was built in 1948. I thought I’d add my data and create a little [scatter plot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scatter_plot):

Graph of average home size in the US

[LJUrban]: http://www.ljurban.com/blog/index.php

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Crepe recipe

100_1769.JPG

On her last night in the US, [Claire](http://sonicchicken.net/blog/wordpress/2007/08/31/claires-visit/) made crepes for us from her mother’s recipe. They were amazingly good! Try these with some [Nutella][] if you dare! Yum…

[Nutella]: http://sonicchicken.net/blog/wordpress/2007/08/28/nutella/

* 250 g (2 c) flour
* 3 eggs
* 1/2 L (2 c) milk
* 20 g (1.5 Tbsp) butter, melted & cooled
* pinch of vanilla sugar (we got ours from [Ikea][]), or salt if you can’t find it
* 1 “petit veue” (sp?) (2 Tbsp?) rum or Grand Marnier

[ikea]: http://www.ikea.com/

Put flour in a mixing bowl. Add 1 egg and ~1/3 of the milk and mix gently (don’t beat yet). Repeat until all the eggs and milk are incorporated. Mix in butter, salt or sugar, and rum or Grand Marnier. Beat until smooth. Let rest for 2-3 hours. Cook over high heat in a lightly oiled frying pan. (Claire suggested keeping a paper towel and a small bowl of oil near the stove–just wipe the pan with the paper towel *lightly* between crepes.)

If you’re planning to eat plain crepes, the Grand Marnier tastes better (imo), but the rum crepes seem to go better with fillings.

The first two times we made this recipe, we used 2 Tbsp of butter and 1 cup of flour due to conversion errors. (Insert standard rant on the stupidity of US measuring system here.) According to a [butter conversion][] applet I found, it’s actually 1.4 Tbsp. On the same site I found that there are [4.5 cups of flour per pound](http://www.onlineconversion.com/forum/forum_1134924759.htm), so at 2.2 lb/kg gives 9.9 cups/kg. Next time we’ll try a little less butter and a *lot* more flour.

[butter conversion]: http://www.onlineconversion.com/cooking_butter.htm

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Maalouf’s Taste of Lebanon

My buddy, [Andy](http://warboss.wordpress.com/), has been urging me for months to try the food at this Lebanese place he likes. But I’ve been coming home for lunch most days, and I wasn’t going to take my family there for dinner without Continue reading

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