The devil is in the details

Today we were both able to be at the house all day! We had planned on getting there early but Katherine had other plans. She was up at 5:45am and wouldn't go back to sleep. We were able to get another hour once my mom got up and watched Katherine for a little bit. We had to hit Home Depot, yet again, on the way so we didn't get there until 10:30am. Bob was already there working on the bar wall and got it all buttoned up. He's still working on the drywall holes in the laundry room on the other side. We will have to call our painter back to mud, texture and paint it.

Steve and Tim were there continuing to work on the cable and wiring. They were able to cover up the hole in the green room floor with protective wall plates. Usually those wall plates go over studs that electrical wires pass through so that if you were to try to drill into that stud you will hit a metal plate (and thus stop drilling) before you accidentally drill through live electrical wires. That would be bad. Sean came by in the morning to help out, too.

We had picked up white vent covers to replace the ugly brown ones. They look great against the white baseboards. The one in the living room had a bent vent so we had to bang some more nails into it. Since its a 4 inch wide opening that meant one person held the short flat head nail with needle nose pliers and the other tried to bang the hammer sideways to hit it in. Not the head of the hammer, just the side of it and you could only move it a few inches. Not a quick process.

Mike and I replaced the round knob dimmer (missing the knob) in the dining room with a new touch dimmer. It was actually easier than regular light switches. 

From there we moved on to attach the dining room chandelier. It was an easier process at first than the dinette light because that we measured before we tried to wire it and thus removed the excess wire and chain links prior to installing it. It was a difficult process though because we had to thread the wires through the upper housing hardware. The first time we forgot the ground through the hardware and had to rewire it, the second time the ground wire was too short and we had to splice it. Then the third time we had thread through too much wire and the chandelier was hanging from the wires and and not the chain. Poor Mike was up on the ladder the whole time working above his head. Sean and I took turns holding the chandelier above our heads so that Mike had slack. The real pain to deal with were the arms of the chandelier.

In order to take up as little space as possible when packaged the five arms of the chandelier were folded so that three were together on one side and the other two were together 180 degrees away. When the three arms of the entry way light were bent similarly they just swung out to the position you wanted. When we tried to swing the arms of the dining room chandelier they wouldn't move. At all. We unscrewed the top of the chandelier and had to dismantle part of the it to see why. Each arm carries the wires from the socket for each bulb into the main part of the chandelier. Each set of wires goes through a screw that has two, count 'em two locking nuts on them. We tried attacking them with two pairs of pliers and that didn't work. We had to pull the light sockets out slightly to lower the wires enough to be able to fit a socket wrench over it. Even then Mike had trouble loosening them. All of this was not mentioned in the directions. I don't see how a layman would have been able to get this figured out. We actually has to undo electrical tape, wire nuts and the initial circuit just to start.

Once we had the arms adjusted we had to tighten all the nuts again, then pull the wires back up and twist the circuit together again. Then reassembled the top of the chandelier. All of this was between rewiring of the ground wire attempt #2 and #3. Eventually we got the shades on. We were all excited to test out the chandelier and realized we had no bulbs in it. The first bulbs we grabbed didn't work; compact flourescents don't work on dimmers. We ended up scavenging an incandescent from the garage to test it. The touch dimmer didn't work the way we expected but we figured it out and its fancy. ;)

Later, after the second Home Depot run of the day, we got enough lights to actually light it up and it looks pretty good.


The rest of the day we worked on replacing outlets in the family room. The electrical panel labels continue to confuse us and we tend to turn off enough circuits to kill the whole floor just in case. We taught Sean how to replace outlets, too. Changing the outlets from ivory to white makes such a difference. I also changed out the door stop on the garage door. For some reason it is about two inches off the floor. Currently we're using a bottle of soda and a gallon of some kind of cleaner to hold the door to the garage open. I took off the old one which must have been on there a while because all of the paint came off with it. I replaced it with a new one that actually touches the ground; apparently a novel concept.

Dad came over after flying and worked with Sean to replace the leaky valve on the front irrigation. Mike and tried to clear everything off the carpets since they're getting replaced tomorrow.  The house is really starting to come together. New paint and baseboards made a huge difference. The outlets, lights and covers have been great details to add. But the carpet is really going to make it look like a new house. It will feel clean too and I'll feel better about the baby coming over. There are still a few things to do but its definitely looking better.