There's a Light

Noel has been plugging away slowly at the upstairs wiring this week in the evenings, after the heat of the day goes away (the lovely thing about the Bay Area is that even on days when it tops 90F during the day as it did twice this week, the temperature drops by 20-30F at night).

He installed this junction box in the attic to handle all the wires for the upstairs wiring, much like the one in the basement.

And yes, our attic is filthy. That's mostly soot from the old chimney, but also just dirt. And there are some mysterious raggy burlap sacks up there.

This is looking down on the subpanel from the top of the attic ladder. Hey, the attic ladder is awesome! So totally worth it. Yes, it is a pain to fold it all up and it's a bit cumbersome to manage with the over-ten-foot ceillings, but this is a trillion billion times better than doing this kind of work through the 18" square hatch with a ladder that we used to have. If you are contemplating this upgrade and you ever need to work in your attic, GO FOR IT.

Then he made this lovely bundle of wires (each one labeled on both ends for faster wiring), and I pushed and handled the curls at the bottom while he pulled up, and soon we had wires in the conduit.

Which got wired into the subpanel all neat and clean.

And one of those sets of wires was run down to put in a couple of wall boxes for the new hall lights.

And this morning, the new lights. I love them. I can't wait to have another in the front part of the upstairs hall, where there used to be a gas fixture. Especially so with all the tools and supplies we have lurking in the darkness to hurt anybody who needs to get a drink of water at night.

(I also can't wait until getting a drink of water at night doesn't involve going downstairs any more.)

posted by ayse on 05/03/14