I migrated all of the electrical circuits to the new box and ran a few new ones.
I started demolition of the "wall" between the "porch room" and the closet. (see illustration)
Washer and Dryer from Shuee & Sons was delivered Friday, so the 2 days leading up to that were a marathon of plumbing, beadboard installation, and painting.
So, here we are on the first day we've been able to rest in a while. It's 9:30am and Sian is still in bed. About time. She pulled an all-nighter Thursday/Friday. Me, I crashed at 2:30am. In fact, I slept a LOT yesterday.
Green's Electric was scheduled to arrive at 9am on Monday. They were here at 8:45am. One bonus point for arriving early. A few minutes after they arrived, the guy from Duke Energy arrived and cut the power, which you can see here:
I went inside for a couple of minutes and returned to find the meter box and all of the outside wiring removed. This is what I saw maybe 4 minutes after the power was cut:
I removed the siding, by the way. I figured since they already had a ladder there and it needed to go away for the new conduit, I might as well rip off what I could. You'll see that I ripped some more siding off later. So, a few minutes after I removed the siding, this is where we were:
Around 12:30pm they needed to get a circuit breaker. They'd worked inside for the past hour or so. I had bought the 200A box, 20A circuit breakers, cable clamps, dryer outlet, and all that, but didn't buy a 60A breaker to use for the old fuse box. That's what they went to get. It being that late, they also went to lunch.
The Duke Energy guy returned around 1:30pm to hook up the power and install the new meter. Luckily, he didn't need Green's here for that. He just asked me if they were at a "safe" point inside. So, up he went to connect everything...
While the Duke guy was up there, the city inspector showed up to verify proper code and all that. He slapped a green sticker on the box, even though the 8 foot ground rod wasn't down far enough (about 16" showing). Here's a blurry pic of my green sticker:
Before they had left for lunch, I had asked about installing the dryer outlet. Less work for me, eh? They quoted me $150 for that. We decided to go ahead and let them do it. The catch was, I needed to rip out part of the ceiling while they were gone. I don't have before pics, but you can see some of the nastiness here in the "wiring has been run" pictures:
Oops! They missed a hole!
Elmo loves things that move around on the floor...
Anyway, the work was done by about 3pm. They were pretty fast, and were willing to work around my "not-quite-code" wiring in the house (ie: knob & tube combined with Romex. lol). They were also relatively inexpensive. The total for everything came to just under $1000.
Now for the bad. Sian will beat me if I don't include the bad part. See the images below:
As you can see, they put the ladder on my chives (I had moved the ladder slightly before I took the pic), and completely decimated the lilies in that area. It wasn't an accidental "oops!" thing, it was repeated over and over - along with the comment "This is playing hell with your flowers!". Also, while they picked up most of the big stuff, they left piles of sawdust, wire casing, and other debris everywhere.
Would I recommend Green's? Even with the bad, yes. I would just caution about flowers and clean-up. The job itself was very well done, and it was done quickly. Everything was coordinated with Duke Energy and the city inspector perfectly, as well.
So, there's my experience with Green's Electric. Now for Dave's Heating & Cooling...
While I was tearing out the wall between the closet and the porch room Wednesday, Dave from Dave's stopped in to see about finishing the AC job. He looked at the box and asked about a circuit breaker and line to the AC unit. Oops. He said he'd look and see how much 10/2 he had at the shop, and if he had enough he'd come back and hook everything up. He looked at me and said he was sure I'd like to have the AC hooked up today... I was sweating like a pig, by the way, and it was around 88° in the house at that time.
I went back to tearing out the wall. Dave returned a short while later (his shop is a block away from my house), although I didn't know it. Sian mentioned something about "the guy from Dave's". That's when I found out that he had returned and was running the 10/2 for the AC at that moment. I went down into the basement where he was. Just a note; he showed great courage and dedication by going into my basement... You'll remember that I just replaced all of the plumbing down there. It's wet, stinky, and there's a pile of junk/crap/shit at the base of the stairs waiting for me to remove it.
Anyhoo, Dave wanted to know where to bring the wire up. I showed him and he asked me to go upstairs and pull it through. He eventually discovered the trick to getting wiring up through the hole in the concrete/under-around the sill plate (it's a pain in the ass), and I pulled out about 15 feet of shiny orange Romex. I had a 30 amp breaker that I was going to use for the water heater, so I let Dave use that for the AC. I didn't rewire the water heater until the next day.
With the wiring taken care of, Dave went back outside and completed the charge/test of the refrigerant. We chatted for a bit about refrigerants; R-22 for home AC, while I'm used to R-12 and 134a for automobiles. I also mentioned this site and the fact that he'd be getting a review on here. Luckily, I found out that he had just had a site built, so I could link to a real, live web site for one of my local contractors. Maybe I should convince the others that they need one, and that I should build it for them.... hmmm....
Did I mention that Dave originally stopped by around 5pm? AFTER he was technically closed for the day? It don't get much better than that. If you'll remember, the furnace installation in December was fast and flawless. Now that the AC is also completed, I can give Dave's Heating and Cooling a definite thumbs up/5 star rating/gold star and cookie.
Sorry I don't have any pics of Dave with his pressure gauges... lol
Other stuff:
While I was replacing all of the plumbing in the house I decided it was a good time to go ahead and replace the kitchen sink. Here's the old one sitting outside all lonely and foresaken:
You can have it if you want it... It's in SERIOUS need of reglazing or whatever the hell you do to porcelain. Let's just say that some Liquid Plumber backed back up the drain and sat in the sink for about 9 hours... While you're here, you can take the other 2 sinks as well.
Here's the new sink, in no way secured to the counter at all:
Just found this one...here's the new 200A box after Green's had hooked up a couple of circuits. The big white wire is feeding the old fuse box with 60 amps. Or was, rather, since the old fuse box is now gone.
Lastly, our new washer and dryer...
After a whirlwind of activity the last two days, primarily centered around removing everything from the laundry room, connecting drain pipes and such, and getting walls up and painted, we were rewarded with Sian's new babies...
I know the picture isn't great... both of our cameras are dead, so I've been using my Motorola KRZR as my digital camera. So, here are the links to these so you can check them out yourself. From what I've seen so far, I HIGHLY recommend these. (Sian has already done 5 or 6 loads of laundry, and I don't even have the dryer vent installed yet, lol!)
You'll note that the list price is a total of $1528 for the pair. The absolute best price I could find online was $1101 + shipping. We paid $1100 including delivery and installation. The guys got them into the laundry room without incident, and they leveled them up as best they could. The floor slopes a lot, so the only way to get them both level was to have the dryer 1/4" or so lower than the washer. The adjustable feet just weren't long enough for our exaggerated slope.
These things are QUIET! You can't hear them in most parts of the house. The dryer is louder than the washer, of course, but it's still damn quiet compared to the ones I've used previously. They also don't shake at all. Oh, and they're both Energy-Star compliant. I don't know how accurate the cost estimates on the yellow tags are, but the washer is very near the "uses least energy" end of the scale. It estimates yearly energy consumption at $17.
You can't really see much in the picture, but Sian painted the entire west side of that room, floor included. With that half almost done, we can really see what the room is going to look like. I think it's gonna look good.
Well, that's it for this time. I'm trying to get Sian to write an entry for the blog so that it isn't always the grumpy one that you hear from. Post a comment with your encouragement so that she'll know y'all are interested.
Comments to date: 2. This is page 1 of 1.
Luis&Laura (VJ) Puerto Rico
Posted at 12:54pm on Sunday, May 13th, 2007
Sian must be so proud of her new washer and dryer. It's a great feeling to finally be able to do laundry at home. I'd really ticked off if they had trampled my garden too, but it's part of renovating. Last time my family did a big renovation in our home, we wiped out the garden and started anew once the renovation was finished.
Patricia W. Jackson ,Mich
Posted at 6:56am on Sunday, May 13th, 2007
Good Reviews and I can't believe you got all of that electrical work done for $1000, that's a very good price.
The trampling of the flowers reminds me of when I had my house reroofed in late '05. I had lots of annuals planted and within three hours they were buried under tons of old shingles, squashed into oblivion. However, the roofers cleaned up every single scrap of shingle, nail, you name it.
You and Sian have done a great job and your home is really coming along nicely!
