Electrical work on the basement

Matt took this last week off of work, and got a ton of work done on our basement getting the electrical all started. We are rewiring everything. Putting in all new outlets, switches,  new lights in the ceiling, and re-organizing most of our electrical panel.

The electrical in the basement was updated at some point (over the last 40 years probably?), but still really old and unfortunately some of it not to code. So that is why we are just replacing all of it. We have even found in a few small places where (when they originally replaced all the "Knob & Tube" wiring at some point) they left small sections in place, yikes! So luckily all of that is removed and taken care of now too.

We decided on can lights for most of the ceiling, and are picking out some larger lights for the bedroom and den in the basement. We also got some cool hanging lights from ikea to put over our future bar. 

The basement is a mess right now. It stresses me out to go down there, haha, just tools and electrical stuff everywhere, as well as sawdust from all the drilling through 2x4's. 

New boxes for where wires from different parts of the basement connect. Apparently this is "code" and is not how it was done before. Matt also replaced the wiring going to our hot water heater, and added a switch so it can easily be turned on and off from electrical (also code these days). 

 New wires and outlets in, yay.

New framing around the column at the bottom of our stairs, where we will now have switches for all the lights in the main living room/bar entertainment area.



More building

This post is a bit delayed, forgot to put it up last weekend... but figured I would still share now.
The (hopefully) last building project we had to do in the basement before we can really dive into all the electrical is done! We have already made a few updates with minor electrical things (moving a few wires, etc. we ran into as we were building some last walls)... but the major re-wiring of the basement is hopefully happening the end of January when Matt has a full week off of work.

Anyways, back to current projects. We had to build soffits around the main line of duct work in the basement so that when it comes time to drywall, we can actually put drywall around all of the ductwork.

Another wall built

Matt finished another wall in the basement this week. We have realized building walls is pretty simple. This one took us a bit longer to decide how to do though, since it will have a door in it.

I mean it's just wood and screws... doesn't sounds that complicated right? But do we want a normal solid wood door or a french door? We finally decided french doors would be cool since it will be between part of our basement living room and the bedroom downstairs we are making into our new office. That way we can keep the doors open if we want and make it feel even more open downstairs. So then we had to decide the size (4 foot wide or 5 foot wide seemed the most common)? Finally after measurements and such we decided on a 4 foot wide version... and then Matt just had to buid the wall which will eventually support that door.

It was a little hard to capture a picture of it with the bad lighting in the basement right now and all the construction mess... but here you go!