Electrical

   In the 6 months it took for us to close on our house we had plenty of time to create to do lists and to research how to tackle each task ahead. After a lot of internet scouring and talking to our electrician I felt confident in my abilities to tackle redoing the electrical upstairs. Something that I highly recommend doing when becoming a homeowner let a lot a remodel junkie is developing relationships with professionals that allow you to work with and around them. It has been a great joy of mine to watch and talk with them and use them as a teacher / supervisor. The one downside that I ran into with this type of relationship was that it established a looser work contract where it became difficult at times to get things to a timely schedule. 

   The first step in planning for the electrical work upstairs was to layout an electrical / remodel plan. I tried to plan ahead as far as I could for any future uses of the rooms; this included the possibility of converting one of the smaller bedrooms into a bathroom where I choose to wire it as one and include an exhaust fan. Another change I decided to make in the wiring of the home was to install a 100 amp sub-panel in the upstairs. The homes style of construction did not favor running all the electrical from the basement up, the slab walls, hand hewn beams, and overall lack of sensible runs made it an easy decision. The only sets of wires that had to travel between floors, was the main 2-2-2-4 feed line to the sub-panel, the integrated smoke detector wire (which is a must nowadays), and one wire for a 3 way switch at the top and bottom of the stairs (and as I may ad, was the most frustrating part of the electrical as the paths to run it from floor to floor were a wooden nightmare).

Before panel

After panel (with whole home surge protector) 

  One part of the electrical remodel that I had a professional take care of was the installation and upgrade of a 200 amp panel in the basement. The picture above shows the state of the panel when we moved in, a lot of cheater breakers (2 breakers fit into the typical 1 space) and for the most part completely full. In addition to the main panel, there was a few close junction boxes, one of which went to the garage and was not functional/safe.

   I failed to take many picture of the wiring process, however you can imagine what it looked like. Nail a box, drill a few holes, pull wires, splice, join, repeat. With that, you can get an idea of some of the electrical work and the insulation that came after that. 

 Upstairs sub-panel

Master bedroom

Bedroom #2

After a little debate, we decided to go with a 3" thick, closed cell spray foam. The cost was about double that of batt insulation but was money well spent with how "loose" the home was (the price difference was just a drop in the bucket for this old home). With the construction of the exterior walls being a mix of slab wall and traditional framing, there were some areas with very little wall cavity and they had to be furred out with 2"x4"s (The studs on the furred out walls were offset from the existing to allow foam to wrap around the backside in an effort to prevent thermal bridging).  Over 3 days the company came in and sprayed and shaved the walls. As an extra, I had them spray the first 2 feet of the eaves above the top plate against the roof, knowing that I was going to use blown in insulation in the attic and would not be able to get the proper R-value to help prevent ice damning. 

   

Bedroom #2

Bedroom #1