More electrical updates... and a new fan

This is where Matt has spent most of this weekend, up in our attic. He has been working on electrical still, and since he has just about everything in the basement done now, he figured he should do the updates in our attic we have been putting off while everything in the basement is still open and there is easier access to the panel and things. 
The reason for the attic electrical updates is that it still had some horrible knob & tube wiring going to a couple of our upstairs ceiling lights. This came up when we had our inspection, but it was not clear what the extent was. We realized it was not just a couple places in the ceiling, but everything in our upstairs ceilings (Bedroom light, Bathroom lights, Kitchen ceiling lights, Living Room fan, Office lights)

 (You can see a bit of it in the picture below with the white knobs with tubing running between them). Happily... every last bit of the old stuff is disconnected now, and about half is re-wired with new wire.

After the wiring in the attic above our bedroom was replaced, we decided to throw out the old ceiling fan in our room today and buy a new one and hook it up.  Here is Matt putting in the new mounting for the fan with the new wires, and new fan below.

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.



Electrical

That's right, we are doing the electrical in our basement ourselves. Luckily all the electrical that was already in the basement wasn't too old, so it's mainly just adding new lights and outlets, and moving much of the wiring around so that it works better for our needs.

The first thing we had to do was map the electrical in our whole house. Since this house had been remodeled so many times over the years and new outlets and things added, the notes on the panel were outdated and there was no good way to know which outlets or lights were hooked up to which switches on our electrical panel.

We are reading a book on DIY electrical, and the way they suggested you do this is turning off every breaker on your electrical panel and then turning on one at a time to test which outlets and lights are "on" connecting to it.  After you find out which switch goes to an outlet, you right that number down next to it on the map of the house and then on to the next.

 This handy tool, you stick the metal end into an outlet (or up against a loose wire) and if its "on" the little tool buzzes really loud (kind of like a smoke detector sound).

For some outlets we were having a hard time figuring out... here is another strategy we used. This tool we borrowed from a friend, and you plug the black piece into an outlet which is "on", and then you go to the electrical panel and put this yellow piece next to each switch until it buzzes loudly. This was a much easier way to figure out which outlets went to which switches on the panel. Unfortunately it didn't really help with ceiling lights... so for those we were back to the first strategy.

The whole process only took maybe 4-5 hours, although I'm sure someone skilled could do it more quickly.


On a side note... you know how you tell kids not to stick their fingers in outlets? I also learned you should never touch the sides of them if they are exposed. =)  Those little round metal pieces on the sides of this outlet (hanging from out ceiling) gave me quite the shock when I went to grab it so I could stick the outlet tester in it. One tingling arm later and now I know...