99 House Adventures

The past couple of weeks have been about the details. The little things that are finally getting some “I love what you’ve done, it’s so comfortable” type comments, and the like. Baseboards in the kitchen, new light fixtures, the fascade finally blocking the laundry shute. A dining room table that is set, instead of just being a place for stuff to land.

Saturday, January 9, 2010
Order of assembly: Ran the electrical, put up insulation, put up drywall. What happens when you finally go to put on the face plates and the outlet is set deeper than your drywall? They happen to make these things called box extenders. So today I took off the faceplate, unscrewed the outlet (but didn’t unwire it) and slipped the collar around the outlet. Next screw the whole new assembly back together so that the box extender collaring the outlet sits on top of the drywall instead of directly into the box.
Doing this to two outlets and two light switches took about 30 minutes and only required a screwdriver, in addition to the extenders that cost less than $3 for a package of two.

Okay, so just like building a house, the foundation for this site is now in place.  I plan to talk about my renovation of a house built in 1942 on highway 99.  I’m now about 9 months into the adventure and will catch you up on what has taken place so far.

As of January 2009 we are in the middle of a bathroom remodel sparked by a non-functioning tub drain.  The most common question I receive is how do I know how to do all this stuff?  The answer is that I’m doing research by reading books, talking to lots of other people who have fought with the same particular challenge (of the hour) and it’s all grounded in a healthy dose of being nieve!

If I knew how much work it was going to be, would I do it again?  Heck yeah!