Christmas Lights

So normally this time of year I try to get out the festive garland, tree, ornaments, and most importantly the lights on the tree. This year due to our compressed time schedule and imminent baby deadline, Christmas lights have a taken a new turn. My mom coming to visit in 5 days has also made Bryan hurry a little bit more, since the guest bedroom and bath are currently without any power.

Bryan has been working diligently on some of the electrical work in the house. We have as part of the last few projects had the main line to the house upgraded, new 200 amp box, new outlets on the 1st floor, and all new electrical on the 3rd floor. So really a good portion of the work is complete. Just the second floor and the ceiling in the first floor remain as remnants of the old work. This nice pretty yellow wire, is how all the new stuff is supposed to look.

The picture to the right shows some of this old work. For those who haven't experienced the wonders of knob and tube wiring this may seem even stranger, but this is a weird combination. This is actually a junction between the old knob and tube, and conventional, but old, wiring that also existed in the house. We are pretty close to getting all of the old wiring out of the house, but when you do see some of this old stuff, it is still surprising that the lights have actually worked for the last 100 years, and that we haven't burned the place down yet.

So the last couple of weekends have focused on new lights, and new outlets. As with all projects sometimes they take an unexpected turn. This one is no exception. They do create some unexpected results, that can also be kind of funny in a sort of sad way. This next picture falls into this category. It is kind of hard to tell, but this is a look into our old bathroom, which for the last week hasn't had power to the lights. So there is an extension cord from another room with a table lamp on the toilet. I should say it does create a nice ambiance in the room at least. With Bryan's extreme diligence it does seem that this situation will be remedied by Thursday when my mom shows up. While we can deal with bizarre situations in the house, it isn't nice to subject guests to our chaos. I did tell her to bring slippers, and a thick robe, as there is no real way to clean most of the areas under construction, but in theory she won't have to trip over the saws-all and table lamp in the bathroom for Christmas!