Electricity

One of the projects that Kelby and I tackled during the three day weekend was the rewiring of the entire kitchen.

Once the kids had torn off the drywall and insulation in the kitchen, a hodgepodge of wiring was exposed. Some of it was original... 10 guage, 2 wire, no ground... some of it was 14 guage 2 wire with a ground. There were also junction boxes hidden behind the drywall--a definite no no according to Homes on Homes, not to mention code. It was an easy decision to make when deciding that it had to go.

We started by ripping out all of the old wiring and placing three new outlet boxes, a new switch box that would power the lighting over the sink and the one that will light our currently non-existent back deck, and a GFI (ground fault interrupt... again, the cool lingo) outlet that will power the garbage disposal--we don't have a disposal in the Davis house, and I have decided that it is a must have for the new place. GFIs are used wherever electricity and water can mix. Gotta thank Holmes on Homes for that tidbit.

That was the easy part... running the new wiring was a little more difficult. Picture Kelby in the attic with a twenty-five foot fishing tape... a cool tool designed to fish wire thru walls... and me standing outside trying to fish the end of the fish tape out of a 3/4 inch hole eight feet below him...

"Can you see it?"

"Nope, but I can feel it with my pinky finger. Up a tiny bit... down a bit... too much... up a bit."

"Can you grab it"

"Don't move, I'm getting the needle nose pliers and a coat hanger."

You get the picture. About forty-five minutes of that and we finally had two strands of 14 gauge wire and a strand of 12 gauge wire fished thru the wall and up into the attic. The 12 gauge would power the outlets, the 14 would run the lights.

After installing a junction box in the attic, we ran the 12 gauge wire thru existing holes drill in the framing and shortly had the outlets, including the GFI up and running. The lighting posed a more difficult task. 14 gauge had to be run down from the attic to the switch on an exterior wall, back up to the attic, over a door header, and back down to the light fixture for the back deck. Simple on paper, not so in reality.

See, the roof pitch is 3 on 12, meaning that for every horizontal foot of roofing there is a three inch vertical rise. What that means is that there is very, very little clearance above the exterior walls. Add in a few inches of fiberglass insulation and 16 inch stud bays and one has what amounts to very tight quarters to work in...

fiberglass insulation, stud bays and rafters left out for clarity, sound effects not included with picture because they would all need to be bleeped out anyways.

I wore long sleeves, long pants, a dust mask and safety glasses, but I am still itching from crawling around in the insulation. At one point my face was buried in the god awful stuff, eyes closed, minimal breathing, while blindly groping for the hole in the top plate to feed the wire through only to discover that I could not fit the down strand thru the same hole as the up strand. Kelby quickly grabbed the drill and bore a new hole from down below while I prayed that he wouldn't hit my hand... which I couldn't really move out of the way because of the tight confines. Kelby has good aim with an 18 volt cordless drill mounted with a 3/4 inch auger bit. I wonder what my hand would have looked like with a 3/4 inch hole in it...

Long story short, it took us all day... 7:30 AM til about 7:00 PM to complete most of the job. I say most of the job because we still have to wire two three-way switches to power the light that will go over the kitchen island, but that should be simple. There is ample clearance... about three and a half feet... in the attic above the where the island will sit.

Shhh, don't tell Holmes on Homes that we didn't pull any permits for the electrical work!