I am ecstatic. For the first time in years, I am typing under a bedroom ceiling light. With a switch, by the way! Pull-chain lights are history, baby! (not that they ever worked here, anyway).
I spent most of the day Saturday in the suffocating confines of my attic. It was awful. But after a time of some blood, sweat, and tears, I survived. And I was able to electrify the two upstairs bedrooms (my room and the boys’ room)! Oh we are so happy. I only have one outlet, though, in my room. The boys will have to wait for me to tear out more plaster and install another in their room. But we only had two outlets each in our rooms, anyway… and we never had good working ceiling lights, so this is a real plus for us. I am also so happy to see the fruits of my labors!
I have to neaten the circuit panel in the basement before the inspector comes Thursday. That will be quite a chore, as it is a mess with 60 year-old cables and empty fuse panels from the 20′s still there. I have to eliminate all the junk and the useless clutter to make room for the new circuits I am building. It is a day’s work, I think. After that, I must remove all the old wiring from the Living Room ceiling (knobs, tubes, etc).
After the inspection, we can start rebuilding our Living Room– at last! And after that is all complete, I have to finish wiring the remainder of the house: Stairwell, Kitchen, Upstairs Bath (which has no electricity at all), the Dining Room light, the Front Entry, the Laundry Room and Breakfast Room, and the basement lights. So… I’ll be busy for a while.
But right now I am enjoying an evening of doing nothing, under my newly wired ceiling light– with wall switch!!
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[...] While the kids were digging, I was doing interior gutting. Our chimney has been leaking and mildew had been growing for a while. When I removed a small wall, I found out why. Post is here. I realized I had to remove a wall from the living room to get the mildew out. When I did this, I discovered such ancient and damaged electrical wiring that I realized I had to gut the entire room. We pooled our money together and renovated the entire room. Because I had no money for an expensive electrician, I stayed up nights studying electrical circuits. I wired the living room, the bedroom above it, and a few other areas myself. And all my work was given the stamp of approval by the inspector! I saved about $3,000 by doing this work myself. The worst part was going into the attic. [...]