The WALLS

After the electrical was finally done, all we had was the simple task of installing drywall. Step one: buy the drywall and get it home safely.

Whoops. That didn't work.

Apparently when you are driving 55 mph, its like 55 mph winds are trying to lift the drywall off the roof rack. In other words, instead of having 3 4x8' sections of drywall, we now had 6 roughly 4x4' sections. Gently rained on. Well.. We'll make it work.

We were much more successful at cutting and installing the drywall (though with many more seams than originally intended...). Even Barb managed to get a picture taken of her doing some work.

After we got that done, we tried to mud. The taping and mudding wasn't so bad, but realizing that the mud had to be even with the existing walls gave us a jolt. That's not as easy as Johnathan Scott makes it look on HGTV. So misleading.

So, Barb did a bit of DIY network research, and found out that instead of sanding in the traditional sense, we could try to wet sand with a sponge. It actually wasn't that bad, but it was easy to take off TOO MUCH, and that caused Brandon to go back and mud again. And again. And again. And then one more time for good measure. At least there was less mud dust. (What is it? Its sawdust but from joint compound... I don't know what that's called.)

So. A week later, when the dust settled (ba-dum-ch!), Barb took on the task of painting the front room.  Our colors are fudge and coffee. Well, sauteed mushroom, but we like to think of it as coffee before cream and after. We found this paint called coffee that we really liked, but was in that Valspar premium Eddie Bauer home decor collection for about eight times the price of the normal paint. So we took it to all the different makers and found a close second. I will maintain that we were going for coffee though. Which, if you really know us, or know our wedding, or if you've met either of us once, you know we like coffee.

Anyway. It looks beautiful! (sorry you can't see the colors very well. It looks lighter than in the picture, and looks much more like coffee in the daylight)

In her victory shot, Barb thought she'd share how much painter's tape she had to use.

I think we might need to buy some more.

How the Attic and Crawlspace became my best friends

So.... This is a long overdue post. However, I'm going to blame it partially on how long it took me to actually DO the job, and being distracted by the excitement of adding a member to my family! Welcome to the world, Nephew Jacob!

Originally, the three-way switch in the dining room didn't work correctly. The secondary light switch only worked when the primary was in the "On" position. And there were a ton of wires coming into the box that seemed completely unnecessary. Which meant, of course, that I was going to try to get rid of the unnecessary wires and fix the three-way switch.

However, getting the old wires to reach two feet further over proved somewhat of a challenge. I would crawl under the house and pull free the wire staples, and barb would pull up the extra cord. "OK!" was what I was always going for, but "Still not enough!" was what I got most of the time.

Finally, we got the lengths all correct, and everything pulled into the box.

I connected everything up the way I diagrammed it and....

NOTHING! Oh nuts! What in the world was going on?!?!?!?! No matter how I wired the switches, I couldn't get the kitchen light to turn on. At all. And though the back porch light would turn on, the secondary three-way switch next to it wouldn't work at all. UGH!

I thus began dialoging with the one person I knew could help me: My dad! He was a GREAT help! We diagrammed the box and had LONG conversations while I *tried* not to electrocute myself.

After many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many trips to both the attic and the crawl space, I started to get it. Long story short, (because boy was it a long story...) I had cut the cord to the KITCHEN light (not the dining light) and now the kitchen light cord was just dangling out there unconnected to anything. And I had disconnected the three-way switch to the dining room.

On the last night, I was so frustrated, because everything now worked, except that every time I flipped the secondary three-way switch, the circuit breaker would flip. I had a short somewhere, and it was the only thing standing in my way. I was so close, but I had school in the morning (oh no!) and I knew I had to get this done!

In my frustration of needing to go to bed, I sat down and wrote dad an email, finishing with:

"Proposed Solution:

I need to remove the white from the 3-way and attach the black which is by-passing the switch, as well as attach the light's black to the switch. This would also allow the back porch line to NOT be split.

Thoughts?"

As I was getting ready to go to bed, a thought struck me: If that was the right answer, I could get it done right NOW in about three minutes, and it would be DONE!

So I raced back into the dining room (I didn't even need to go back down to the crawl space or up to the attic!!!) and started re-wiring. (Don't worry, I remembered to turn the electricity off first). Then the moment of truth came: (Well... it was actually about the 17th moment of truth in the saga, but we'll forget that for now...) AND IT WORKED!

I did a SERIOUS happy dance. In fact, it was more like one of those end-zone dances that the NFL has banned. I think I may have scarred Java for life. She turned tail and ran when I started busting a move.

It was done! All the electricity worked! I did it! I even fixed it to a better state then it was originally. I rock! (With dad's help, that is...)

Shout out to Joanne too! The book you got me for my birthday helped me understand what all the wires DO and which parts of the switch feed what kind of electricity.

...and then later, we discovered I forgot to attach the wire for the doorbells. More on that later.