The Week So Far...

Monday I ran the new supply lines for the kitchen sink. The process re-emphasized my love of the headlamp I bought last year. When sweating copper pipes, you generally feel like you need a third hand anyway, and if you're in a tight space under the house it's doubly so because even if you had a third hand, you'd be in the way of the light when you held it. The headlamp has no such problems.

blob-o-tape

The rest of the week I've been pulling wire for the various kitchen circuits. Mostly an easy task, as it's in the ceiling and walls, but it has required a number of trips under the house for the home runs, too. One unplanned for task was moving a switch for an outlet in the living room over to make room for the kitchen light switch (a 3-way switch outside one door; the other is on the half height wall by the other entrance). Because the existing wires from one side weren't long enough to reach the new location, I decided it was time to start a new circuit. I hadn't planned on doing any work on the living room until the far distant future (e.g., after the kitchen is done and the lengthy list of other tasks is completed), but with the wall open, it's a lot easier now. When I pulled the old switch out of the box, I was afraid I was going to find some dodgy wiring job with things just twisted together like I've read about on other blogs, but they'd actually soldered the splice before smothering it in tape, so it wasn't too bad. But now the living room has its very own 15 amp circuit, though only the newly replaced outlet has a proper ground. That leaves...um...the short hall in the middle of the house as the only thing on the old house-wide circuit? Maybe the closets? With this house, you can never be sure.

Today I was out to Habitat, and for a change I wasn't cutting stair stringers, or even doing anything related to stairs. Instead I was helping inventory the beams for the different house models, making sure each had the correct set in its pile. That meant pulling out a few that were too short and cutting new ones, and pulling out a few that were too long and cutting them down to size. In case you're wondering, 4x12 LVL beams are heavy. We also ran some temporary electrical for the speechifying and such that will go on during the build-a-thon. Finally, we repaired an extension ladder that had been smooshed on one end. It's now in better shape than it's been for a while, though it is about 4' shorter.