[friday]
again friday was a normal work day for karen and i, so in the morning we ventured to our offices, while mom, kimber, and dad stayed home and did their thing.
[1] from what i remember mom spent the majority of the day getting more rooms cleaned, organized, rearranged, and prepped to begin painting when it came time for that.
[2] dad & kimber spent the majority of the day trying to trace more wires back to the electrical panel and map out where the ones were that theyd yet been unable to find or figure out where they were going. i think mom helped out some with this as well - you wouldnt think it was so time consuming and difficult to trace wires, but when everything just pops out in the basement, goes to half a dozen junction boxes, disappears above and behind duct work and in the floor joists, nothing is labeled or seems to have any pattern or coordination... its frustrating... whoever wired the house before us took a number of short-cuts, was lazy in doing things, did them bizarrely, or just completely wrong altogether.
[3] i think mom and kimber got started painting in both the office and the hallway and made some progress in both - although more in the office than the hall.
as i said before, josh and cassie got in right after work on friday and we went to dinner in the frigid cold, and i dont really remember getting much accomplished that night in the way of projects after our big dinner. we gave them the tour of the place [although they really gave themselves the tour more than they let us, lol] and i think we all ended up in bed fairly early after a pretty exhausting day thus far.
[saturday]
well saturday was the first big day that everyone was at the house and ready to get some work done. so other than our various excursions to the depot, lowes, or meijer [another place that seemed to be frequented during their visit] we spent the day working on the house - and all over the house at that.
[1] all the women spent a good part of the day prepping the parlor, and painting it [with some caulking assistance from josh and i around the ceiling, in the corners, and around the windows.] by the end of the day theyd not only finished painting 2 coats in the parlor, but had also rearranged furniture, and put together window treatments with handmade curtains [a la my lovely and talented wife!] and had the parlor looking mighty fine. it really is gorgeous =] they were quite pleased with themselves, heh. [and much deservedly]
[2] in between coats in the parlor they spent more time on the hallway and the office getting them taped off and painted. when that was all said and done for saturday theyd gotten all of the office painted that could be [there were some things that needed to be repaired before the rest could be painted] and the hall had one coat on about half of it - which is a lot considering how big it is. =] additionally, i think they even got started painting a primer coat in the closet and possibly got started on painting some trim and doors in the closet, but i cant remember if that was more saturday or sunday.
[3] dad and i spent the day tracing more wires out and trying to find the last few wires that we couldnt yet find and started pulling new romex in the basement for some of the lines we needed to replace. one of the biggest accomplishments we achieved was getting a new homerun [thats when you run a wire to the circuit panel or "home", thus homerun] pulled through a pain in the ass plumbing chase from the attic and managed to get the power fixed in the previously powerless half of the attic! awesome! so now we actually had light in the bathroom! kind of a cool thing, heh.
[sunday]
well as i mentioned before, sunday was the end of josh and cassies visit and we spent most of the morning having breakfast, after which we went home to work on the house as much as we could before they had to say goodbye.
[1] so while they were still around we tried to put them to work a little and there was more painting done in the closet with the primer and the trim and door.
[2] dad and i were pleased with our progress with the new line for the attic and decided on a plan of attack for the other half of the attic..
--let me take a second here to explain briefly the situation with our electrical in more depth. basically, the entire house was on 2 circuits, minus a few independent lines for the stove, furnace, electric radiators in the attic, and the dryer. other than that, there were two circuits that everything was on - one for the lower two levels and one for the upper two levels. so you can imagine we had somewhere around 30+ outlets and lights on each of those circuits which is a few more than youd really like to have. not to mention there were 3 or 4 other circuits in the house that only had like one outlet on them, soooooo weird. so one of the main goals of our electrical work was to split all the circuits up in a way that made sense and distributed the electrical loads more evenly. so now to get back on track with the storyline we were going to try and have three independent circuits in the attic, one for each half of lights and outlets [which was fairly even] and the same independent line for the electric radiators.--
well, before the day was over we'd been able to not only successfully pull a new homerun for the second half of the attic, but we'd done it on one or the outside walls - which in a house of this age with structural brick and plaster exterior walls, is a feat nothing short of miraculous. id be understating significantly if i said it was difficult - dad didnt think we'd really be able to do it and was pretty shocked we were able to pull it off, haha!
[3] josh was also a great help in doing some patchwork in various places it was needed. there was that same spot in the stairwell that i mentioned long ago that id neglected to finish, and then a few other places.
[4] dad and i scraped a wall in the office where there had been a lot of water damage to the plaster and paint - the main thing that needed to be done for more painting - and i demo-ed out the existing closet in the office that was not only very poorly constructed, but was pretty well water damaged as well and just is really sad shape. the absence of that closet in the office is a significant transformation - and so much for the better!
[5] dad and i also were able to disconnect and pull off the old circuit panel and start hooking up the new circuit panel in its place. which sounds fairly simple when i say it here, but theres a lot that has to be done in order to disconnect every circuit from a circuit breaker, disconnect a panel, install a new panel and hook up new circuits - especially since we were trying to put all the news stuff in with a lot more sense than it had originally been done - god only knows what sense [if any] that piece of crap made.
[monday]
well cassie and josh were now back in texas and it felt quieter and calmer without them there. it was a little strange considering how short of a time theyd actually been in town, but those days were extremely long with all the work that got done, and i know i [as well as the rest of the group] had quickly gotten accustomed to them being there and we missed them a little after theyd left.
well again, monday was back to the normal grind for karen and i, so we headed out to the offices for work, and then straight home to get started on what waited for us there.
[1] mom and kimber spent most of the day doing more painting - this time they were working on finishing the primer coat in the closet and getting the first coat of real paint on the walls in there as well. other than that, i know that they did some general cleaning and straightening things up around the house and more secondary things like laundry and the dishes and such, im really not sure at this point - but i know it was all very helpful!
[2] dad had spent the majority of the day [and i helped as soon as i got home] pulling new wire for some of the circuits that needed to have wire replaced. there was a lot of knob and tube [really old wiring] in a lot of the house, and also a lof of older romex [the new-er kind of wiring, although this was still pretty damn old] and a lot of it was either a gauge of wire that dad really felt it shouldnt be or it was old and crumbling and such - basically it just needed to be updated and replaced to make dad feel like we were in a safer situation - no more fires in our walls! [did i mention that dad discovered the original outage in the attic was caused by a fire in one of our junction boxes that fried the circuit? we are so so so so lucky it was contained in that junction box and didnt spread into the walls and cause some serious damage - thank the lord!]
[tuesday]
well karen went to work on tuesday [despite all my efforts, heh] and i took the day off to keep working on the house. keeping in mind that mom and dad and kimber were supposed to be leaving tuesday at around 2:30pm and we still had a LOT of work to get done before dad left - stuff that i just couldnt do myself [although i had picked up a ton of knowledge and experience helping him over their visit and there was much more i was capable of doing on my own than id ever thought i would].
[1] mom and kimber spent the day going through and really cleaning house as best they could. the place looked like it had been ransacked by viking siege or something with all the messes we were creating in all these various projects and mom really wanted the place to be as clean as possible for us so that we could have some peace and sanity once they left. i think there might have been a little more painting done in the closet, but i cant remember for sure - i think they tried to steer clear of painting and making any more messes, lol!
[2] well dad and i spent the morning trying to re-wire and move wires out of the way of all the joists in the basement that were going to be repaired. we also pulled new wire to the kitchen so that we could finally get the microwave operational without an extension cord, and also an independent line that was for the future hookups of the dishwasher and garbage disposal - which ended up being a whole pain in the ass all on its own, haha, poor dad. [but awesome!!] anyway, i think i mentioned earlier that mom and dad didnt end up leaving on tuesday, and well the reason was that by the time 2 oclock rolled around, dad and i still werent finished even though we'd busted our asses the whole weekend to try and get finished, but these things just take a lot of time, and there wasnt anything we could do about that. so they ended up extending their trip a day and dad and i worked the rest of the day and night to try and finish running all the new wire we needed and hooking up the rest of the new circuits and such in the new panel.
[3] well, my contractor decided to make an appearance on tuesday morning as well. so while dad and i were moving stuff out of his way and trying to get our work done, he got started cutting out the first of the three bad joists and repairing it. it took a while, but but the time he left hed gotten the first joist mostly cut out and repaired, although it still needed some more hardware and eventually its column and footing as well.
and thats all the time weve got. tune in next time for the exciting conclusion, lol! [and if youre lucky, i might even remember to take some pictures to post for you!]
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