Adding an Electrical Outlet
Posted by Wayne
One of the things that bothers me most about my garage is that there is only one electrical outlet, and it’s not in a great location. As part of my built in work bench I wanted to have at least one additional electrical outlet on top of the bench. Unfortunately the entire area is already drywalled so running new wire from somewhere else isn’t really an option.
I had considered tearing down the drywall to get some more electrical outlet to the location that I wanted it, however recently I noticed that there is an outlet on the inside of the house directly on the other side of the garage wall where I wanted another outlet. I knew that with some careful planning I could tap into that circuit without doing much damage to the existing drywall in the garage.
Inside Outlet
Finishing a Garage, Part 1
Posted by Wayne
After a much needed (and much deserved, if you ask me) break, this past weekend I started on a new house project.
I’ve spent the past couple of months deciding on which project I wanted to tackle next. I’ve been wanting to finish off our garage just so I can have a nice place to work on the rest of the house projects. Our garage is gloomy and ugly. Some of the drywall work is the worst I’ve ever seen. The walls of the garage are covered with that “holey” material to hang tools from. There is only one electrical outlet in the garage. There is only a single light bulb in the garage. I temporarily fixed the lighting issue before we even moved into the house by adding some fluorescent lighting, but nothing is hardwired and there are cords running all over above and below the rafters above. With a little effort I can fix all the shortcomings of the garage and have a really nice place to work.
This past Saturday my friend Tito was helping me pick up our old appliances and countertops to load up in a trailer to take to the dump. While I had the trailer (borrowed from my folks) I figured I should swing by Home Depot to get some drywall and start on the project.
Before
Installing an ethernet outlet
Posted by Wayne
If you read the previous post about the “forearm forklifts”, you’re already aware that I had the good fortune of being given an awesome big screen TV. My father in law wanted to get one of those flat panel screens to hang on his wall instead of having his giant big-screen, so he generously gave it to us.
This rekindled my interest in my barely used XBOX 360. I previously had it hooked up to an okay sized TV, but it wasn’t great. I would really only play the XBOX on rare occasions just because our basement TV room was kind of dreary. The big screen (and awesome surround sound speaker system that came with it) pretty much changed all of this. Now it’s my favorite room in the house.
Finished Kitchen
Posted by Wayne
Kitchen Before
Kitchen After
Quite an improvement, huh?
Replaced garden window, replaced countertops, painted cabinets, new appliances, new sliding glass door, installed wood floor, new pantry door, new ceiling lights, installed undercabinet lighting, tiled backsplash, replaced outlets
Total cost: $8000. Total time: about 120 hours (that’s my estimate and I’m sticking to it). Most of the work was done in random 3 hour shifts over about 5 months.
Replacing Electrical Outlets
Posted by Wayne
The electrical outlets above our kitchen counter were cream colored and old. Because I had installed a half inch thick backsplash around them, they were now recessed into the backsplash and I needed to extend them outwards before I could install faceplates. While I was at it, I figured I should upgrade to new outlets as well which matched our kitchen.
Before
Installing an Oven
Posted by Wayne
This was about as easy as a project can get. Once again, you’re probably thinking that you don’t “install” an electric oven, you just plug it in. But ours didn’t come with a plug to plug in.
When we bought the our appliances the salesman asked if we wanted a $40 cord/plug for the stove. “No,” I says to him, “I already have a cord from the old stove.” I didn’t want to get a new cord because of the cost, but also because what if the male plug I got didn’t fit into the female outlet that was already installed behind the stove location? It’s probably standard, but you never know. There are a lot of 220v plug configurations.
I removed the power cord from the old stove and connected it to the new one in about 15 minutes. Then I plugged it in and pushed it back into place.
The electric stove we picked is our only “regret” in the whole kitchen. It looks great and we’re not professional cooks so I don’t think we need the additional capabilities of a gas, but the ceramic stove top is a pain in the butt to clean. If we could do it again we’d definitely choose gas.
After
Installing a Dishwasher
Posted by Wayne
When we were purchasing our appliance set the salesman asked us if we wanted to have their guys install the appliances, and I told him I could handle it but I was curious about installing the microwave because I had such a tough time getting the old one removed. He told me if I could install the dishwasher, I could easily install the microwave. That removed my fears about the microwave because I knew the dishwasher would be a piece of cake.
It certainly didn’t hurt that I removed the old dishwasher so I had a good understanding of how the new one would go in. There are 3 things you have to connect: the dishwasher drainage, the water supply line, and the hardwired electricity. The water supply line has it’s own shutoff valve underneath the sink and the electricity is on its own breaker, both of which I turned off before removing the old dishwasher.
Installing Undercabinet Lighting
Posted by Wayne
Because we had chosen absolute black granite for our countertops (which are like black mirrors), we were debating whether or not I should try to install under-cabinet lighting because of the reflection. We were worried that you’d look at the countertops and see lights and a bunch of wires running around under the cabinets (which was not the look we were going for). I was also under the impression that I’d have to run a wire or two inside the cabinets, which wasn’t a huge deal but it certainly wouldn’t look that great when you have a cabinet door open.
I never got the official OK on this from my wife, but I was at Home Depot one night and found a set of 3 black halogen “puck” lights that I thought would fit the bill. Because everything was black (lights and cords), I thought you probably wouldn’t be able to see it that much in the reflection of the granite. I think a set was about $25. I bought two sets figuring that I’d install the first one and if it didn’t look good I’d just return the second set.
When I got home I opened up one of the packages and was not particularly happy with what I found. I expected this set to be ready for hardwiring, but it actuality it was designed so that each light had an outlet plug and it also came with a cheap 3 outlet extension cord so you could plug them all in and then plug it into a wall outlet. I can’t imagine how you would use this set as-designed underneath your cabinets and make it look any good. And just where do they expect you to plug the extension cord into? Do they expect you to use duct tape to hold the big bunch of plugs out of site underneath the cabinet? I wanted a permanent set of lights here, not some riffraff!
As is usually the answer when I get angry with inanimate objects, I resorted to brute force. I’d “hardwire” (technically it would still end with an outlet plug) this all together onto one side of the cabinets and see how it turned out before opening up the other package and and starting on the other side.
Updating the Kitchen
Posted by Wayne
Before
Oh boy, now we’re getting to the fun stuff. As I write I am in the process of finishing the kitchen updating. As you can see from the picture above, we started with your typical 1980’s kitchen: honey oak cabinetry, laminate countertops, linoleum flooring, ugly bay window, ugly sliding glass door (just outside the picture to the left), etc. If I go upstairs now and look at the kitchen, I can’t believe it’s the same space.
For this project I’d be painting (hopefully) and installing hidden european hinges on the oak cabinets, tiling or installing granite countertops with an undermount sink (and all the plumbing that comes along with it), adding in some sort of tile backsplash, replacing the appliances, replacing the lighting, replacing the bay window, replacing the sliding glass door, tearing up the linoleum and installing wood flooring, and replacing the pantry doors (not seen just to the right of the photo). This is a big job. Probably not so start-from-scratchish as the office space I completed, but there was just as much work to do here.
I read a while back that the absolute minimum cost for upgrading a kitchen is $15k. I knew for a fact I could do this for $5k, with all brand new nice appliances, and people wouldn’t believe how good it looked. Tune in again to see how I did it and how it all turned out (or come to our unveiling party March 1, invitations to be sent out soon).
Office Space- The finished product
Posted by Wayne
Finishing the office took me a couple of months just working on the weekends. I liked the finished office so much that I had to buy a 20″ iMac for the space rather than put my ugly old computer down there. My wife uses the office space to do her interior design work and we’re both down there frequently.
I also bought a pretty sweet set of Harmon Kardon Soundsticks II speakers off of Ebay and the subwoofer fit perfectly into the box I had built below the desk for that purpose. The sound in the room is incredible.
We also added a few extras like the shelf above the desk and the corkboard on the back wall.
Office Space- Electrical Wiring
Posted by Wayne
Electricity seems to mystify (and scare) a lot of people, however I find it quite interesting and easy to work with. As far as being scared, I can’t blame those people… but it’s easy to avoid getting shocked. If I’m changing a light fixture I turn off the switch and tape it down with some masking tape so no one turns it on causing me to forget what the off position is. If I’m working with an electrical outlet, I plug something into it and turn it on, make my wife stand there, and then go outside to the breaker box and turn off breakers until she yells that it isn’t working anymore.
Now that I’ve said it’s easy to avoid getting shocked, I have in fact been shocked with 110v several times and it wasn’t too bad (nothing on my body smoked afterwards). I understand that getting shocked with 220v is a much more electrifying experience, and as I have future work involving 220v in the queue I will plan on being much more careful with that.
Before mounting electrical boxes to the framing I had to make a decision on exactly where we wanted the outlet(s) located on the wall. It was at about this time that I made the decision that I would be custom building and laminating a wall mounted permanent desk. I figured the computer would plug in down below and the computer monitor would plug in through a grommeted hole through the desk. I also wanted to have an outlet above the desk just for plugging in things every now and then without having to crawl around under the desk.
Office Space
Posted by Wayne
This next project was something that I did to an awkward little room at the bottom of the stairs in the finished part of the basement. It could have been a good laundry room but there was no 220v electricity, venting, or plumbing nearby. Basically the room had no purpose. My wife wanted me to make her a little office out of it for her interior design work. Originally I had told her that this would be a piece of cake but changed my mind about that and put it off for quite a while until she finally talked me into it.
Despite the size of the room, this was the biggest project I had taken on in our house to this point. I would have to lower the ceiling two inches (more on that later), frame out the walls because 3 or them were cement foundation (the one closest the camera was framed already), while framing the walls attempt to square up the room, install a lighting canister, run electricity and install electrical outlets, do some difficult drywalling, paint, carpet, trim, and build and laminate a custom built in desk. This was a big project!
This is the first project where I’m going to try to break it down a little more step by step. Check back soon for my first installment.
Thermostat Wiring Woes
Posted by Wayne
When I was painting our living room in the fall of 2006, I removed the thermostat because it only took a couple of minutes and I’m a perfectionist so I wanted to paint underneath it instead of trying to paint around it. This was mistake to the tune of about $125.
There were about 5 different wires connected to the back of the thermostat, each a different color, and each connected by a screw that was clearly labeled with the color of the wire. These were easy to remove and easy to see where they should connect back to.
First project!
Posted by Wayne
Technically the first project I did upon moving into the house was to install fluorescent lighting in the garage. There was only a single light bulb mounted in the center of the garage hooked to a switch by the door. I can’t believe the house was around for 26 years and no one ever lived in it that wanted to do any real work in the garage! To keep things simple I just bought an electrical socket that screws into an existing light bulb socket and I hung several 48″ fluorescent plugged into that. I’m toying with the idea of finishing the garage someday and I’d do a real rewiring job at that point. For now, it is as bright as day in the garage and that’s good enough. You’ve got to have priorities.
After
Total Cost: $50, Total Time: 3 hours