So I’m writing this post somewhat late (it’s actually day five) of my week off, but I have a good excuse. When I went to write the daily update last night, the Internet service was out for a while. Seeing as how I was awfully tired from the day’s events, I decided to head for bed rather than wait it out or write a draft of the post.

That said, I had a really productive fourth day. I started out the day by taking my load of assorted metals to the recycling place. That was about a $90 payday. Cool. And it’s out of my way. I then went and got a few more items necessary for the upcoming sump basin work. My return home then found me in the attic, working on the electrical work I’d wanted to finish.

I wasn’t all that stoked about climbing up into the attic and hanging around there during the mid-day period of time, but it wasn’t that bad. I’m glad the air temperatures were only in the low 80’s though. I ended up spending most of the afternoon in the attic, although I came down several times to work on other things. But as of 7PM, I had wired up a second ceiling box in the stairwell for a future light to be installed, cut all of the holes necessary for the new outlets and sconce lights (and their switches) in our bedroom, run wire to those new locations, and finished cleaning up what Beth hadn’t taken time to clean for me. Not a terribly bad day.

There were a few choice times along the way. Getting burned by a jigsaw blade was one. That sucked. As if it weren’t hot enough up there anyway. Drilling a hole in what ended up to be the wrong place (stairwell ceiling) was another. It really isn’t that bad (it can be easily fixed before we work on painting the stairwell), but since the attic was full of insulation, I had to go by measurements and the presence of beams. It turns out (I later found out), what I thought was the cap plate of the wall was actually part of a double-wide ceiling joist (non-structural supporting, believe it or not), which happened to be three inches to one side of where I actually needed to drill. Ah well. A few pilot holes later, and things were good to go.

It was a damn dusty and hot day for me. BUT, all of my attic electrical work is now complete, so I shouldn’t have to go up there again. At least any time soon. And not for that sort of work. If I do, however, I put marker flags in the insulation (when I re-buried the junction boxes) so I can easily know where those are in the future, should I need to get up there to fix or change something in the future.

That’s thinking ahead.

Later in the evening, I also installed the panel outlets and wired up that circuit. This is to be used for the sump pump once installed and also for anything else. It’s just good to have a panel outlet. Especially since there’s no other source of power in that neighborhood of the basement.

It was a very long day, and as I write this, I ache. I know I used several muscles that I’d not used in some time yesterday. But it’s all good. I slept hard last night, and in a few hours from now, I’ll hopefully have a hole in my basement floor and through into the cistern. I’m sure there will be stories to tell about that forthcoming adventure.

It’s started out interesting so far today. I’ve ended up with the gas concrete saw instead of the electric one because the electric one burned up.

But that’s a story for a post late tonight or sometime tomorrow.

Until next time…

“The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.”
– George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

–MZ