Out with the Old, In with the New

So glad to say good bye to all the old, unsafe fire hazards that were part of the original 1947 wiring in our house, including the ungrounded cloth insulated wire, original meter box that was in the laundry room & that fuse panel mounted behind the kitchen cabinet.

And look at our shiny new weather head outside and some new outlet boxes, switches etc. We even added some new pendant lights at the front entrance.

The Inconveniences of Reconstruction

After two weeks of construction a few inconveniences are starting to get old. Mostly having all our belongings packed up & shifted to the center of every room so that the electrical outlets can be rewired. It makes for annoying flow patterns throughout the house. I already have matching bruises on each hip from bumping furniture corners. And of course as the rewire progresses, we're shifting boxes from one room to another, thus loosing track of where the hell to find things when we decide we need them. And then there's the constant drywall and plaster dust. Even with most things covered in plastic and their sweeping up after almost every hole they make, I still see a constant layer of dust everywhere I look. But hooray hooray, yesterday we passed the rough electrical inspection, so now we can proceed with patching up the holes and moving some things back. Of course, I'm wishing I had time to paint behind some of the larger pieces of furniture so I don't have to move them again later, but I'm needed to finish the floors, walls & cabinets in the kitchen.

Total House Rewire

This is what happens to your walls when you need to rewire your whole house. Since our 1947 home had mostly cloth insulated wire, lots of holes needed to be knocked out to accommodate the new electrical wires & to pull out that old unsafe, ungrounded antique stuff. That old woven covering gets caught up on nails, in tight holes in the studs & any sharp splinters on the old wood studs. Our house luckily has wood floors & joists and a crawl space under it which I hope made the job a bit easier for the contractors doing this messy job. Since we ripped out the kitchen floor to the joists, it gave them better access under the house although it's a tight squeeze with plenty of dirt and the Florida heat is killer. Before they started I was expecting we'd have long runs of wall gouged out between every outlet. But fortunately in our case the wires came down the wall under each outlet and draped under the crawlspace to the next outlet. It seem the electricians had a tougher time when the wires ran up the walls to light switches & into the ceiling, that being another horrible place for them to work since we have blown-in fiberglass insulation up there. These guys have been doing an excellent job keeping the holes to a minimum and cleaning up debris all along the way. I am so pleased with the work they are doing, as I was expecting a much bigger mess.

Kitchen Renovation First Day

Well it's our official first day of construction on the new kitchen. We spent the day moving out the old gas range & the refrigerator and then we sealed up the room for tomorrows demolition...Yeah! We get to take a sledgehammer to the old cabinets. Fun starts tomorrow! We do still have to run a corridor of plastic sheathing out to the front door, and add a zipper entrance at the kitchen, but we're going to wait for the electrician who's also starting tomorrow. He needs to move that breaker panel and we don't want to make his access too inconvenient. Sure hope I can keep up with the pro's tomorrow.

New Kitchen Cabinets

Bamboo Cabinets

Maple Slab Door

Our kitchen renovation we were planning last year had to be postponed because we couldn’t afford the additional cost to rewire the entire house that would be triggered by moving the fuse panel out of the kitchen. We now have the financing together and are back to the project.
The original bamboo cabinets I had found are no longer available, so I had priced some slab front maple cabinets that were available locally. Then a few weeks ago while searching microwave cabinet ideas, I came upon a new source for bamboo cabinets. I’m still waiting on the sample door and hoping it fits the bill because they carry more of the cabinet sizes I prefer for my layout.

Dream Kitchen may NEVER be realized

As we’ve been interviewing & getting contractor quotes for our kitchen renovation, a problem has arisen over the electric. The kitchen was renovated & electric updated in the 70’s, but we knew it would need additional rewiring, as there aren’t enough outlets, not enough dedicated circuits for appliances & some appliances are relocating. There is a panel/fuse box in the kitchen that has a cabinet mounted over it. We knew this was not to code and planned to not put one over it. We had planned to put a base cabinet below it. We were told that also couldn’t be done.

We’ve known for years that our 1947 home had some areas with very old wiring (non-grounded, cloth insulated) and we knew there were issues with an old meter location & some strange old panels & boxes outside, but weren’t planning to deal with all that yet. One electrician told us if we wanted to permit the kitchen it would most likely trigger a complete rewire. He suggested we relocate the panel in the kitchen. His quote was $11-13K for the electric alone. We had another GC out who told us he thought that price was very high & referred us to another electrician. His quote just came in and is even higher.

We can’t afford both the kitchen & the electric. There’s no sense adding to the fire hazards that exist by not permitting the kitchen, so we’ll have to work on the rewiring. Also adding to my blues, I went to the website where I planned to order the cabinets to price a revised layout if we move the panel & found the prices had jumped in the past 4 months and I’m now looking at an additional $1500 for my cabinets. Guess I need to win a lottery.

Old Houses always throw you a monkey wrench

Not sure what's to come with my kitchen. The latest contractor to come out and give me an estimate brought along his electrician since I told him the house was built in 1947. I knew we would be rewiring the whole kitchen because there aren't enough outlets, some aren't properly grounded & we're rearranging most of it too. But the electrician asked to look at the meter & main panel & told me that trying to permit my kitchen would most likely trigger a whole house rewire from the bldg dept. We were well aware of many old boxes, old meter cans & some stuff we couldn't identify, but he showed me some things that are a bit scary. I really don't want to construct without permits or add to what is probably already a fire hazard, but I wasn't expecting to redo the whole house. This may now knockout my whole kitchen budget. The only plus side is that we will then move the elec panel that's in the kitchen & really in the way of a good design. So I have to wait for his rough estimate and see what I can budget. Meanwhile I'm going to continue demolition cause I just can't stand looking at it any longer. I'd rather look at an empty room with holes in the walls than my gross old kitchen.