news from the front

Day um… aw heck, I’ve lost track already. At any rate, I don’t think I’m going to set any records for my bathroom renovation project. I have about half of the drywall up now, and have roughed in some support for a shelf that I will be installing into the north wall.

My befuddlement as to why the porch light stops working when I flip the circuit breaker that controls the majority of the bathroom had me once again rooting around in the crawlspace under the western portion of the house. I imagine the web of cables would make sense to the spider that ran them, or perhaps even to a professional electrician- but not so much to me.

I found another interesting artifact in the dirt worth mentioning. It is nearly a page and a half of the Albuquerque Tribune dated September 22, 1944 (that makes it 62 years old tomorrow). It is pretty kool- especially the funny ads for everyday items. It contains part of an article about allied troops taking an important bridge, an obituary for a local boy killed in action in France, a 50th wedding anniversary announcement, and part of the Major League Baseball standings (which I found particularly interesting).



The paper fragment contains all kinds of intriguing information, but I decided that I would have to save it to read at a later date, as I needed to get back to work on the bathroom. I did replace the regular old outlet with a brand new GFCI receptacle in order to check off the first item from the electrical “to do” list.



Then I took a deep breath and pulled out the double light switches on the north wall that control the ceiling light, sconce light, fan and wall heater. What a tangled mess! It didn’t look like what I was expecting, so I took some time and consulted my reference books and a few electrical websites. Half a bag of candy corn later I had formulated my plan of attack.



Everything went well, and I actually had one piece of wire left over. Great Bill Schmidt’s ghost! Someone had taken a strip of bare copper wire and run it between both live terminals on one of the switches. After I figured out that they had done so in order to use it in the manner of a brand new switch that hadn’t had that little copper plate broken off, I felt relieved. Surely that isn’t the best way to have done it.



On a roll, I ripped out the old rough in can for the crap wall heater and had the replacement one installed, wired and operating in just over two hours. Not bad at all!



Now I have more drywall to hang, and it is time to select the lighting.