Let's Get Electrical

My dad came out last weekend and we bought everything we needed to bring electricity into our fledgling cabin.  Inviting an electrician into a job like this is a complicated proposition.  We ended up expanding our original wiring blueprint, adding in several helpful outlets and light fixtures, but without the help this could have gone on for weeks - nay, months!

When we arrived, before we could start the wiring, the first thing we needed to do was finish putting up the interior walls so that we could run wiring through them.  Dad and I set to work on them on Friday night as soon as we got there.

Laying out the first interior wall

We made pretty good progress, and finished up the next morning.  My sister came down from Hayward and helped push up the final pieces.

All the interior partition walls done

Later on Saturday, Katie and the boys came to check out the progress.

Guthrie likes that drill!

With all the walls in place, we double checked the layout, and got down to the job of running the wire through the walls, and nailing all of those blue boxes in place for receptacles, light switches, light fixtures, and power for other appliances (like wall heaters).

Monique Lends a Hand

With our nice high ceilings we'll have plenty of room for a chandelier.

The spot for the light is a lot higher than it seemed...

It was a whirlwind weekend that left my hands throbbing from yanking wires through tiny little holes and around corners, but I can't believe how much we got done...

Just the breaker panel left...

The local inspector has checked the breaker panel and the socket for the meter (so they can move the meter off of our temporary post and into a permanent spot on the house), and the utility company should be out there to power it up any time now.  Soon we'll be able to plug things in from the inside!

Many thank to Ray Sr. for making this mountain of work look so easy.  Not having to figure everything out from a book or a drawing makes everything go so much faster.  We couldn't have done it without him - not this year at any rate.