How Not to do Electrical

We bought this place knowing it needed to be restored.

A.  Lot.

We spent  four hours with the inspector and received a 40+ page list of stuff that needed to be fixed.

We spent several hours with an architect friend determining what things might cost (he was remarkably accurate) and what needed to be done (also remarkably accurate).

We bought it anyway.  We've had fun at every step of the way.  And if I had it to to over again, I'd still do it.

Now, I'm certain it was no surprise to the previous owner that the house needed a lot of work.  We've run into her on occasion since buying the house (both before and after the story I'll tell in a moment).

We'd approach and ask how she was doing, etc.  Usually her first reply was, "I'm surprised you're not mad at me and still want to talk with me..."  We're always puzzled by that.  We have no anger towards her.  And if she wants to see the house sometime, I'd be glad to show it to her.

Now comes the story of how not to do electrical - otherwise known as the day where the difference between life and death is less than an inch.

Seriously.

(Oh, yeah.  Here's where I should mention that normally this blog is meant as a light-hearted look into the process of restoring this house - it's not a personal attack on anyone and if you don't see it that way, then don't waste your time reading it.  The rest of this post is deadly serious.).

I was doing the demolition in the carriage house.  I'd taken out the cabinets behind the ladder in that post's picture and was getting down to the studs in that same area.  Being smart enough to know that you don't use a reciprocating saw willy-nilly (you never know what pipes and live wires are in a wall, duh!), I was taking down the sheetrock by hand.  When I pulled a piece off, it came off completely to the floor and there was a flash and a loud "crack" sound.  My foot tingled as I stood there stunned, wondering what had just happened.  It was a sunny day and no thunderstorms were in the forecast.

I looked down and there was the end of a 240-volt circuit wire, bare ends exposed, laying loose near my foot.  The smoldering burn mark on the floor was less than an inch from my shoe.  Lots of bad words were spoken as I carefully backed up so as not to touch the wires.  I gently laid down the piece of sheetrock before walking over to the electrical panel.  Sure enough a breaker had popped. It was labelled as an electric baseboard heating circuit, but didn't identify where the heater was...

Making sure it was no longer a hot circuit, I investigated more closely.  I hadn't pulled it loose from a heater or a junction box.  Someone had just left the thing loose in the stud cavity; bare wire ends and all (like the picture at right - note this is a staged photo; I had a computer crash and lost the actual photo of this incident).  There was enough wire that it could flop around when I pulled the sheetrock off.  So this thing's been a fire hazard, lying "hot" and loose in the wall for years, waiting for some unsuspecting soul to run across it and electrocute himself. This could easily have been me (beware - graphic image).

If you're going to dead-end a wire, do it properly - get it into a junction box fixed to a stud, staple the wire down, and wire-nut the exposed ends.  Someone's life might depend on it.

How Not to do Plumbing Vents

Yes, it's another one of those posts.

It describes one of those things that make you go, "Hmmm?"

Or one of those pictures on This Old House's Home Inspection Nightmares gallery.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services has a nice piece on the dangers of sewer gas.  It should be required reading if you're planning to mess about with your plumbing vents...

Remember when I replaced the wax ring on the toilet because there was a foul odor in the Study Bath?

Well, it helped for a while, but eventually the odor came back.  Now that we've demolished the attic, I know why...

See the pipe up against the brick in the attached picture?  It's above the left-most leg of the telescope.

That's the plumbing vent for the study bath.  It comes up from the first floor behind the curved wall in the Music Room.  Then up through the corner of the closet in Little Man's bedroom.  Then up through the attic floor in the picture.

You might think that it passes through the insulation and out through the roof deck.

But you'd be wrong.

Instead it goes through the insulation and stops.

Inside the house.

And there's a rag stuffed in the end of the pipe.

That means that it's not venting properly.  So when it needs to let air in, it creates a vacuum that sucks the water out of the traps in the bathroom and lets the sewer gas escape into the room.  And when it needs to let sewer gas out, it ends up inside in the attic.

Loss of consciousness and death.  Lovely.

Flammable and highly explosive.  Brilliant.

Needless to say, the new plumbing vents in the attic solve this once and for all.

The Old Master Bath - Part 8

In order to get "done" for the tour, I declared some things out of scope.  Now it is time to circle back and get them done.

I never painted the shelves that go behind the old glass doors.  Oddly, they had paint only on one side; the other side is completely bare - not a spot of paint.  

Ever, by the looks of it.

The reason I say it's odd is that these shelves were, and are, in a glass-fronted cabinet and some of them are above eye-level.  That means you can easily see both sides of the shelf...

Also odd is that the paint on the front and rear edges have, as my grandfather would say, some serious "holidays".  You can see an example on the edge of the middle shelf running horizontally across the picture.

So I broke out the primer.

It shouldn't take long to get these re-painted and re-installed.

Cass Gilbert Tour

Several busloads of people with the Cass Gilbert Society came by for a tour today.  They visited several Gilbert buildings around the city, including our house.

Of course, the house isn't done yet - that will take a while - but a number of people enjoyed seeing things that are in progress and comparing the "done" parts of the house to the parts that we haven't touched yet.

It was a nice group of people, though I didn't expect it not to be.  It's nice to hear from people that have an appreciation for the house.

It's times like this that bring the proper perspective and remind me how much we've accomplished.  It's too easy to be focused on what still has to be done.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by.

Old Master Bath - Part 7

I'm calling it done for the tour.

Last time we had a big event I was hanging a chandelier at midnight the night before.  This time I finished hanging the chandelier around 11pm.  I must be getting better...

I took the afternoon off to paint the walls.  This is a cool color that looks like pumpkin pie filling when its in the can.  Because it's pretty saturated, it took two coats.  In between coats I re-installed most of the window, door, and cabinet hardware.

The other cool feature are these lights.  They are LED ribbon lights that I installed under each shelf so SWMBO can see her clothes.

After all, one must be able to see one's clothes properly.  Any other way simply would be ... uncivilized.

The Old Master Bath - Part 6

Things have been going at a ridiculous pace.  There's a hard deadline for this project and I've been trying to fit all of it in around everything else that happens in life.

Needless to say, I was up late last night getting the last of the woodwork painted.  OK, not *all* of the woodwork is painted.  I've de-scoped the shelves in the glass-fronted cabinet to make sure that I can get things put back together.  It's oil-based paint and I'm hoping it will be dry enough for the tour Saturday.

Last night there was a little setback as well.

The new trim around the window was nailed into place.  And the sash cords weren't connected to the lower sash...

So I had to remove the trim.  That particular piece of trim is supposed to be installed with screws rather than nails.  Why?  Because sash cords break and you need to be able to remove the trim to replace the cord...

Of course, I cracked one of the trim pieces.  That's why there's a bottle of wood glue on the top of the chest of drawers.  And the drill is ready to go for later today when I attach the trim the right way...

Re-installing hardware and painting the walls should be the last of it later today.

The Old Master Bath - Part 5

I've actually started doing some real painting, as opposed to priming.  It's hard to see that anything is different because the finish coat is "Ivory Tusk".  It's an off-white with a warm look to it and we've been using that color consistently on trim throughout the house.

Only the new cabinet (the multi-shelved one next to the window in the first picture) has the finish coat on it.  The old glass doors and drawers closer to the camera need a little more prep first.  You can see the blue painters tape on the panes where I had to fix the molding on the insides for the doors.  A little more prep tomorrow and I should be able to put the finish coat on that.

These big wardrobes (second picture) are all done along with the set of shelves near the window.  The crown molding also has the finish coat on it.  The plywood end  facing the camera will get a decorative panel that matches the one on the end of the drawer-unit in the first photo.  Once the paint is dry I can re-install the clothing rod and then wire up the ribbon lights (just wait - that will be cool...).

The last photo is looking the other direction.  The shelves in the linen closet are all done, as are the shelves in the overflow closet (formerly my closet) to the right of the door.  If you have a sharp eye, you can see some primer on the door just above the doorknob.  At some point someone installed a keyed rim-lock on this door.  Odd.  I'm not sure why you'd want to force someone to use a key to get into your bathroom...  At any rate, we didn't find it useful so I removed it and filled the hole (in reality it was a major pain if the rim-lock was set to "lock" because...  we don't have the key...).

So what's left?

Filling nail holes in the door frames and base moldings.  De-glossing all the old painted surfaces.  Preping the linen closet door. Repairing and preping the french doors that go into the new bathroom.  Preping the window.

Then I can put the finish coat of paint on

No sweat.

Caulk

Seriously?!

Caulk?!

Have you lost your flipping mind?!

It's an interior cabinet door; you don't need to caulk the glass.  Cripes even on exterior glass you don't use caulk.

Aaarrrgh!

By the way, it's not just in the corners; this whole piece of molding is caulked in.  I have no clue what they were thinking.

It's no surprise that I need to get a new pane - I cracked this one trying to remove the molding.

And of course, this was the last pane that needed the new molding...

On a positive note, you can see my newly installed, hand shaped replacements on the pane just above the old, bad one.  They're not perfect, but they are a lot better than the old ones...