"Who's the electrician in this house?"

An interesting event that I forgot to post about until Craig reminded me yesterday (I was trying to convince him to write the post this week - to no avail).

A few weeks ago, Craig was 'rearranging' our circuit box in order to add additional circuits for the addition and the kitchen. While tinkering around, Craig noticed that the one of the two large power feeds (from the street) was slightly coming out of the box. I was standing nearby reading (we had electricity to the rest of the house turned off at this point so my options were limited). The feed began to spark (arch is the technical term, I later learned). I didn't think too much of it -- electricity sparks, right? After staring at the circuit box for a few minutes, Craig calmly turned to me and asked me to find the emergency number for the electric company. Here's how the conversation proceeded:

Craig: Uh, can you please find the emergency number for Seattle City Light?

Me: Sure....why?

Craig: Well, we may need someone to come out here (totally calmly)

Me: OK...

Craig called the emergency line and explained that our feed seemed to be loose and was sparking every few minutes. Long story short - they sent a crew...immediately.

While I'm pondering what valuables I want to collect and take to the pub down the road, I can sense that Craig is a tad more concerned about the situation then he's letting on. About 15 minutes later, we hear this pull up outside, flashing a HUGE spotlight (oh I forgot to mention that this took place around 8pm on a Tuesday night)...
















These two nice gentleman came, begrudgingly, inside to check out the situation. Come to find out they usually don't handle indoor issues but spend most of their time repairing fallen power lines, etc (hence the truck). These guys were awesome. They walked right over to the circuit box and noticed right away what the issue was. The dialogue that ensued was amazing (names are not confirmed but you get the idea):

John: Yeah, we can take care of this. Bob, hold my toolbox

Bob: I don't know John, that wire's hot...

John: Stop being such a nancy, Bob (OK, a little poetic license here)














John grabs the LIVE wire with his gloved hands and proceeds to re-secure it into place. The entire encounter lasted about 5 minutes. Craig offered the men a beer, which they sadly had to refuse.

Then John commented "Geez, who's the electrician in this house...." To which Craig quickly explained that he found the circuit box in this condition.

I give amazing props to Seattle City Light for their customer service and response time. Hopefully, we won't have to be utilizing that perk again any time in the near future.

It's time to get serious

Once he gets going, you just can't stop him. Craig has been on quite a terror lately, working non-stop on the house. So much progress has been made in the past month it's unbelievable. Things are really coming along!

I haven't really stayed true to my resolution to post updates weekly, but I do have a ton of photos to share. Below are some highlights. For those of you interested in seeing all of the details, I've uploaded all the photos to this Picasa album along with descriptions.

Highlights:

Sources of Motivation

Posters like this one were originally designed and posted in England during WWII to offer the public reassurance in the dark days which lay ahead. I found the phrase rather applicable to our current situation as well (although quite different) and picked up a poster from etsy last week. It now hangs on our door as a source of motivation when we want to throw in the towel and just watch football (like today) or take a nap (like every day) instead of working on the house.

Happy New Year!

With the new year comes new year's resolutions. This year, one of mine is to update this blog on a more regular basis. I'm shooting for once a week instead of once a month this year. The hope being that there may just be a correlation between the frequency of posts and the actual progress on the house (long shot, I know, but it's worth a shot, right?).

New photos coming soon. We're currently finishing up the last of the foundation work under the house which frankly has sucked...big time. Much more for Craig, who is taking this all in amazing stride, then for me. We're really looking forward to sealing up the remaining holes (in the floor, walls, roof, etc) in the near future and then focusing our efforts on making things more 'livable'. Things like pluming electricity and - dare I say - drywall and tile. Just typing that gets me excited. A 'livable' house is on the horizon, folks.

May 2009 see the end of this blog and some amazing after shots. Happy New Year, everyone and thanks for the continued to support!

November/December update

Reading over the subtitle of this blog, I'm hoping that I don't have to edit it some day to say "(over) ambitious 30-somethings"... Oh, I'm just kidding (kinda). We're steadily charging along.

November was dedicated almost entirely to the addition - most importantly getting a roof on top of that bad boy. Mission accomplished. I had nothing, I repeat, nothing to contribute to this project as I'm incredibly bad with heights (embarrassingly so). Thankfully, Craig is definitely not. Not to worry, he was harnessed in the whole time and took the proper precautions. Or at least that's what he said. I couldn't bare to watch and instead kept myself busy with organizing (and reorganizing) our living space and scouring the grocery aisles for new microwavable dinner ideas. Our neighbor across the street, though, was nice enough to stop over and tell Craig he's a crazy *blank* for climbing up there and doing it by himself. Craig is earning us street cred throughout Ballard with projects like this, it's great.

As the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend approached, Craig laid the final shingle, at long last making our house fit nicely in to the complete definition of 'shelter.' Here's the final result:




(yeah, that's a sky light - very classy).


Here are some additional photos of the master bed/bath:


the spray paint outlines the bed.


this will be the bath. The red chair is the placeholder for the commode. The shower will be to the right and the double vanity to the left.

October update

Here are the latest photos of our work on the addition. Craig's dad came out a few weeks back and we worked him to the bone (evidence of that here). Needless to say, we really appreciated his help!

Our goal is to have the house to the point that we'll get at least one trick-or-treater this year. Last year we couldn't even give away candy. I can't say I blame the parents for not letting them take candy from a bowl on top of stacked recycling bins in the yard of a house with no steps, no siding and no grass...

It's about time that I updated everyone...

September has been all about our addition. As explained in past posts, when we bought the house, it was essentially a one bedroom one and a half bath (if you count a toilet in a closet a half bath). Actually, for any Kendzioras reading this, think about the old bathroom in the basement on Manhattan and make that about 2x smaller and more ghetto and that was the master bath in our house.

Anyway, there was nothing on the second floor over the kitchen, so we decided to build up and create a real master suite (albeit a small one). The permitting process took forever and was expensive, but now that's behind us and we're going full speed ahead.

The first step (after demoing the kitchen completely) was to reinforce the kitchen walls so that they can sustain the weight of a second story addition. That was a much more complicated process then I realized so I'm glad that Craig knows what he's doing.

What came next was a similar process to what I imagine a barn raising would be like. Here's a glimpse:



Now that was stressful. But definitely not as stressful as I can imagine it was for Craig to do what he had to do next. Let me preface this with saying that I was in San Francisco all last week. Not that I really do much of the work around here, but I like to be available to at least help hold things, hand 2x6s up to the roof, clean things etc. So, Craig was on his own for a week. Somehow, using some rig of pulleys and a 'shit ton' of elbow grease, Craig managed to get the huge beam that supports the rafters (correct term?) and forms the 'peak' of the roof in place by himself. I wish he would have set up the video camera because I have no idea how he did it.

From Addition Sept 08

for reference, that's a small 2x6 nailed underneath the big ol' beam. Yeah, that's a big beam.

For more photos that show the entire progress on the addition to date, go here.