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There's (at least) one in every remodel...
Mar. 4th, 2006 11:27 amNo, you can't get one of these at Lowes. To use the technical term, it's a screw-up.
We spent months looking for an electrician that would deign to show up, give us an estimate and then do the work. You'd think we were doing them a favor paying them all that money. We had two projects:
- Wire the carport that we've converted to a garage with power, lights, and an outlet for the garage door opener
- Install a 220v supply to the sunken patio area, ready for the future purchase of a hot tub.
Since the garage doors are due to be installed next week, we were very grateful to finally get an electrician here last week to do the work. After many delays and phone-calls, they turned up and started digging on Wednesday. I left them to it, and went to work.
When I got home I hoped everything would look good. Some of it did... But they'd completely misunderstood that while the garage walls will be dry-walled, so roughed-in wiring was appropriate, the ceiling would remain open to the rafters, so wiring needed to be in armored cable, with metal boxes for safety. Looking up at the roof, I had a tangled mass of exposed romex, with plastic new-work boxes for the power outlets. Sigh. Deep breath. I called the electrician, who agreed to re-work the ceiling area. Crisis averted, I went off to work the following day expecting all to be well.
One of the most important things about a remodel is good communication. Not just between you and the contractor, but also between you and your partner! Arriving home Thursday night, it looked like all was finally done to spec. The garage was almost complete, and the 220v supply had been run to the patio. Since there is a flight of stairs and three terraces to navigate between the supply panel and the outlet location, there was a long run of metal conduit, and a large switch box for the outlet. Not pretty. Much more ugly in fact, than I'd anticipated. Well, at least it was done. Then Bill took a look. "The outlet's in the wrong place". Sigh. We'd had many discussions about placement of the hot tub, water feature and other elements over the last year or so. We'd come up with several different layouts, but (big mistake) never actually drawn out an agreed plan. It turned out we each thought we'd agreed something different! After thinking it through that evening, the only solution seemed to be to have the 220v supply removed. When we HAVE a plan drawn up for the back yard with a final placement of the different elements, we'll need to start looking for another electrician.
The electrician was a very pleasant chap named Dicky. On Friday I thanked him for all his hard work, and asked him to un-install it. He looked at me like I'd lost my mind, but what the heck, he was being paid, and it wasn't like I really cared what he thought about me. So, he finished off the work he'd been doing in the garage, removed the offending circuit from the patio, and walked off into the sunset with a check.
There we are - poorer but wiser. In two years, this is really the only major screw-up we've had on our whole remodel, so I think we've done pretty well. And eventually I'm sure we will get to relax in that hot-tub... ONCE we've drawn up a plan!
We spent months looking for an electrician that would deign to show up, give us an estimate and then do the work. You'd think we were doing them a favor paying them all that money. We had two projects:
- Wire the carport that we've converted to a garage with power, lights, and an outlet for the garage door opener
- Install a 220v supply to the sunken patio area, ready for the future purchase of a hot tub.
Since the garage doors are due to be installed next week, we were very grateful to finally get an electrician here last week to do the work. After many delays and phone-calls, they turned up and started digging on Wednesday. I left them to it, and went to work.
When I got home I hoped everything would look good. Some of it did... But they'd completely misunderstood that while the garage walls will be dry-walled, so roughed-in wiring was appropriate, the ceiling would remain open to the rafters, so wiring needed to be in armored cable, with metal boxes for safety. Looking up at the roof, I had a tangled mass of exposed romex, with plastic new-work boxes for the power outlets. Sigh. Deep breath. I called the electrician, who agreed to re-work the ceiling area. Crisis averted, I went off to work the following day expecting all to be well.
One of the most important things about a remodel is good communication. Not just between you and the contractor, but also between you and your partner! Arriving home Thursday night, it looked like all was finally done to spec. The garage was almost complete, and the 220v supply had been run to the patio. Since there is a flight of stairs and three terraces to navigate between the supply panel and the outlet location, there was a long run of metal conduit, and a large switch box for the outlet. Not pretty. Much more ugly in fact, than I'd anticipated. Well, at least it was done. Then Bill took a look. "The outlet's in the wrong place". Sigh. We'd had many discussions about placement of the hot tub, water feature and other elements over the last year or so. We'd come up with several different layouts, but (big mistake) never actually drawn out an agreed plan. It turned out we each thought we'd agreed something different! After thinking it through that evening, the only solution seemed to be to have the 220v supply removed. When we HAVE a plan drawn up for the back yard with a final placement of the different elements, we'll need to start looking for another electrician.
The electrician was a very pleasant chap named Dicky. On Friday I thanked him for all his hard work, and asked him to un-install it. He looked at me like I'd lost my mind, but what the heck, he was being paid, and it wasn't like I really cared what he thought about me. So, he finished off the work he'd been doing in the garage, removed the offending circuit from the patio, and walked off into the sunset with a check.
There we are - poorer but wiser. In two years, this is really the only major screw-up we've had on our whole remodel, so I think we've done pretty well. And eventually I'm sure we will get to relax in that hot-tub... ONCE we've drawn up a plan!
