Rewiring the House: Day 2

A husband, a dad and a blind electrician walk into a house.

No, really, it's not a joke. 

Our electrician wasn't blind, 

but he had broken his glasses so it became the joke of the day

(especially when I used day of the dead skull duct tape to "fix" them).

Anyway, it was a day without electricity in the downstairs of the house.

Dinner was interesting.

The crockpot was plugged in upstairs cooking all day

and the mashed potatoes were prepared at my parents' house, 

brought to my house,

and kept warm on top of the gas heater in the laundry room.

We ate by oil lamp.

My neighbors must think we're really romantic

since we seem to use oil lamps and candles whenever we use the dining room.

 There used to be shelves at the bottom of the basement steps.

I came home from some errands,

 and my dad told me there was an earthquake that took down the shelves.

I imagine he must have thought I wanted the shelves, 

but I had already come ot the conclusion they weren't worth keeping.

What was amusing was that yesterday evening there was an earthquake

centered in a location about an hour and a half away.

The shelves had to be removed to make way for the new larger circuit box

(or whatever it's called).

The guys worked well into the night

and even had the electric company come out.

Nothing like have a giant electric company truck 

in front of your house with flashing lights at 9pm.

At the end of the day 

(really, it was like 10pm when everyone left)

the house is now all on one electric meter instead of two,

and I don't have to walk around with a headlamp. 

This doesn't mean we're done with the electric, 

or that we've gotten the hard part done.

We still need to replace old outlets with new ones,

and run new wire for some things.

And figure out the whys and hows of the work that was done previously.

Like the mysteries of the kitchen outlet that is on a 220 circuit but it's a 110 outlet 

so the 220 has been split and we don't know where it splits to.

Fun times.

It was a pretty crazy busy weekend of house work,

so stay tuned for all the other updates on painting and whatnot.