Hidden Live Electrical Wires!

So as part of our kitchen remodel, we've decided to do many of the smaller projects on the first floor. One of those is adding recessed lighting in the living room and library. They decided to start with the library, which is small enough to empty easily but still large enough to store lots of stuff in other rooms.

Yesterday, I came home and checked out what was going on. I noticed that the recessed lighting was put into the ceiling but there were two additional holes. One was where the switch was going and one was in the center of the room. I looked closer and saw this:

Its kind of hard to see but there is old wiring in there. Turns out, there was LIVE electrical wires and a LIVE box for a fixture covered in the walls. Talk about dangerous! Glad we took care of that one.

They also trimmed out the transom window in the dining room:

And replaced the side door to the driveway with the door that used to be in the kitchen. Great way to save us some money and the door gives way more light. I'll have to find a picture of the original, but here is how much light gets in (the door still needs to be trimmed):

How the Layout Is Changing

One of the most annoying things about our current layout is that to get from the bedroom level to the basement, you have to go down a flight of stairs, through the living room, through the dining room (around the table), through the kitchen and then down to the basement. In order to fix this, we are opening a doorway from the kitchen to the living room. See the red circle between the rooms - that's a new doorway!

In order to create more kitchen space, we closed off the doorway to the outside (in the kitchen) and the doorway to the bathroom - both are circled in blue. We have a side door to the outside off the stairs by the kitchen and another door to the backyard from the office. We didn't really need a third door! We also didn't really want the bathroom opening off the kitchen and it gave us a great place to put the refrigerator - right by the breakfast nook and the dining room so the kids could get drinks and snacks without going near food cooking.

Since we closed off the bathroom door, we opened a new one off the office. Much better place for a bathroom IMO!

Other items not shown: we added 3 transom windows between the dining room and the office, plus 3 skylights in the office. Our dining room is painted a dark green and sucks the lights out of everything (we are painting it a light blue to help with that). It has one set of windows to the outside, but those are blocked by a lovely tree so natural light doesn't flood in. There was also a window to the office that we closed off to make the office a bit more private. The transom windows allow light from the skylights to enter the dining room, giving it a much better natural light source.

So to sum up: RED = added doorway, BLUE = closed up doorway

Oh and in this drawing (its old), PLAYROOM is what I call the OFFICE.

Starting to Take Shape

We are sheetrocking! Of course, when I say we, I mean our delightful construction crews combined with our money. Its amazing how much it closes the room in when walls go up.

We also hit our first big snag. I came on friday afternoon and saw the sheetrock was up in the kitchen. Then I looked at the recessed lights in the ceiling. Something made me pause until I realized that the oven cabinet was going to stick out too far and hit the light fixture! Monday morning, the contractor came and we came up with a plan to move the lights. Crisis averted all before it became a real crisis. Its so important to measure, measure and measure. Then keep checking.

Here are some pictures of the rooms:

This is the breakfast nook that will eventually have a door going to the living room.

This is the cabinet area. On the left side of the picture is the closed up, former door to the bathroom.

Here is the new entrance to the (still tiny, but 6" bigger) bathroom.

The office. Its amazing how nice and bright it is in that room with the skylights!

Now we are getting down to the scarier parts - the finishings. The floor tiles were ordered today, paint colors need to be finalized by next week. I realize those are the easier things to fix (repainting is no big deal) but those are the things you see.

Lots to see

We have skylights and the transom windows to the dining room have been framed.  It's amazing how much lighter it is! Well worth the cost (I think).

Electrical has been run.  New outlets,  overhead lights, fixed the horrific fuse panel electric... They started to work on 3 way switches. 

New plumbing has been run.  New drains,  hot and cold water lines,  vent piping.

New windows are in and siding has been started.  Much better match on the siding than I expected!

Our concrete path has been ripped up but we are still deciding on pagers.

We failed inspection because we moved a pipe a bit so the riser diagram didn't match.  Also because we didn't have the office in our original plan. The architect is working on new drawings.  Sigh.