D and Adam’s House – The Acropolis

One of the hardest parts about living together is going to be communication.  Adam locked a door I had left unlocked on purpose and left me stuck outside on a day I had to paint so we could be ready for the move.  After a quick consult with Adam we decided there was nothing to do but force open a door.  He suggested hip checking it, but that did nothing.  Movies taught me that kicking down doors was easy, so I decided to give that a try.  It worked like a charm!  I’ve now kicked in a door!  (The downside is, of course, that it was my own door…)

My footprint!

Adam is all moved in. A big thank you and shout out to our moving crew – John Eric is the master loader, Volker can lift small planets by himself, Dwight drives trucks like they are sports cars, Katie is the plant transport queen, Henry never, ever quits, Paul can slay furniture even while sick sick sick, Andrea’s twice as strong as her size suggests, and I’m awesome.

It was a rough week leading up to this point. I had to get the master bedroom and guest room (yes Beth, it looks awesome) painted so Adam could put his stuff somewhere. Without Katie’s help I never would have done it. Between the non-stop painting, the move, and Bay to Breakers today (we’ve got to have SOME fun) I’m wiped out.

Tonight’s plan is for a home cooked meal in our new place. Sure, I’ve had to ducktape the oven closed because it likes to fall open, and the microwave can’t be on for more than two minutes at a time without blowing a fuse, but I’m managing. Tonight is carrots, zucchini, and new york steak with garlic. All the veggies are fresh from the farm from Adam’s crazy veggie box delivery thing. Unless I burn dinner by being to distracted updating the blog, it should be awesome!

No pictures this time. No idea where the camera is in this pile of boxes. Boo moving!

The kitchen started out with the fridge inconveniently located in the middle of a wall, blocking the light switch and an electric outlet. There was also an old pantry with some built in shelves, crappy cabinetry, and an ironing board cabinet. Unfortunately it looks like the best picture I have from before we started this project is from the inspection:

After I measured things we decided to tear out the area and put the fridge in it. And so we quickly tore that out:

The next step was to put in an outlet for the fridge, which I’ve posted about previously.

Originally we had been planning to just put dry wall over the existing plaster and call it done, but last Friday I decided that this was dumb, that I really hate plaster, and that it all needed to come out. The process would have been easier if I had decided that a week earlier, however these things happen and so I tore all the rest of it out:

This revealed the inside of the walls, which included fun things like knob-and-tub wiring:

(This is the light switch in the living room)

As well as the mechanism for the sliding pocket doors which don’t currently come out. We decided to leave the walls bare for the time being as having them open will make it easier to install some new outlets in the living and dining rooms, as well as upstairs, and might give us the ability to try to fix the sliding doors. However the fridge has now arrived in its final resting place:

I finally finished painting the bathroom.  I thought it would never end.  Now I’m stuck in the never ending painting of the extra room (Adam refuses to call it the guest room, but that is what it really is.)  We want it painted soon because it’ll be the box storage room as we move in and don’t know where to put things.  I really liked the colors Adam picked out when they were paint chips…but now on the walls I have my doubts.  Hopefully a second coat will turn the lime green ceiling into…something else.  Anything else.

The bathroom started a lovelywhite and pink.  These, as you all know, are Adam and I’s favorite colors.

One of the things that took so very long is how much had to be taped. The sink, toilet, trim, small annoying silver trim around the tile, window, lightswitch, the list just went on and on. Eventually the bathroom ended up primered.

Then came the black tile and roof.

And then red walls.

Our friend Paul stopped by after I had gotten the walls done. He matched perfectly.

Our red, black, and silver bathroom is now (mostly) complete. Yay!

P.S. Comments are now enabled. Somehow I turned off comments when I set up the blog. Whoops.

Tonight I successfully installed the new outlet, starting with a new junction box in the basement, some conduit, and the outlet itself. And now to sleep.

Last Saturday we started tearing out the pantry in the kitchen in order to move the refrigerator from the middle of a wall into the pantry space.  Due to ancient construction practices and crappy remodeling jobs this has taken far longer to complete than expected, and today I was planning on installing a new outlet for the refrigerator.  In the process of doing this I started a more thorough investigation of the wiring in the basement to figure out where the new outlet would need to come from.  And while doing this I discovered (but was not very surprised) that whoever installed the existing electric was either a moron or a slacker.

We knew that the electric system wasn’t properly grounded, and have already started the process of having an electrician bring in a higher capacity line (currently we have a 40 amp line, where 100 amp is the minimum they install today, and we probably will need 125-150 amp once the hottub and everything else has been installed), install a new service panel, and properly ground things.  However I had thought the current system was grounded via the water main, which at one point in the past was standard practice, and it turns out that the service panel is grounded to it.  However the ground wires to the kitchen are attached to nothing but the ground screws on the basement junction boxes and to the conduit via that, which while better than nothing isn’t much better.

So upon discovering this, rather than start installing the conduit and wiring for the new outlet I decided to map out the electrical system that was visible from the garage, and my map is below.  And as a note, the “K&T” notes stand for “Knob and Tube”, some of which is still in use.

From the looks of it I’m going to be doing a lot more rewiring than I had been expecting, since I had assumed that while the grounding was crappy that they were at least had grounding lines. It’ll be fun!