Day Nine: Open sesame.

The big news of today is the new opening has been made between the kitchen and the dining room. Check it out.

So I believe the heavy construction phase is coming to a close. There's still some minor framing to do in a couple places, but until the plumbers come back to do the finish work, and the window guys come to install new windows in the kitchen and bedroom, we're on our own.

But with the good comes the incomprehensible. I worked from home this morning so I could meet the city inspector to approve the plumbing. Thing is, the inspector never shows up. I get a call from the plumbers saying they got a call from the inspector who said the street address didn't exist. Now that's weird, because I'm pretty sure I live there. You would think an employee of the City of Portland might, just maybe, have a map of Portland so they can find addresses. Or a computer. Or this thing called www.portlandmaps.com, which coincidentally has my house on it. All the work I've been doing has been on an imaginary house. If only I had known, I could have just imagined all the home improvements.

We'll hopefully meet the inspector on Friday, and hopefully they will say what a great job I'm doing, take a little money under the table, and approve my work.

Talking about work, tonight was electrical night. I moved the overhead switch to a new home, but had to modify it slightly from my plan. Originally I was going to put a 3 way switch on the overhead light so you could turn it on coming through either door. But then I realized I'd have to run new wiring to the light itself, and it didn't seem worth it. So I put it on the north wall (photo below), under the windows, which is convenient if coming in to the kitchen through the pantry, basement, or dining room.


But that took a good while to run that cable. My arms need to be a bit longer. After that, I ran the cable for the oven. (photo below)

I also framed around the plumbing pipes and the electrical cable using a flat stud technique. Apparently that's the term for making a wall out of studs but having them sideways (as told by an architect friend), like my challenge that was overcome by the sweet, sweet sidecar junction boxes.

And I ran the electrical for the garbage disposal. (photo below)

The lower right is the outlet that the garbage disposal will plug into, the upper left is the switch that will turn on and off power to the outlet, which in turn will power the garbage disposal.

That's it for today. Running the cable took longer than expected. Tomorrow will be finishing the counter height outlets (except for the half wall that's going to go in the new opening between the kitchen and dining room, and probably some other electrical. Maybe a bit of the framing that's left as well. But we'll save that for tomorrow.