Today was a good day to end out 2012. After all that has happened over this past year I am more than happy to have the year end and have progress made on setting up the new workshop on top of it all. I had to confer with my good friend Garry yesterday to help me figure out some electrical snafu's that had show up with my setting up the new workshop. Garry gave me some pointers once again and so I tore into the project today hoping for the best. As I have said in earlier posts I am a rookie when it comes to anything electrical other than changing out a dead light bulb once in a while. So this is what I had to look at today.
On one end of the new workshop I had started enlarging the door from a single door to a double door. This was looking good until the fist snafu showed it's ugly head.
Here buried inside the wall between the main beam of the house and the old "Rec" room was this electrical box. Written below the box are the words NW Bedroom & Bathroom. This gave me a clue at least as to where the wires were going and that was about it. I tore the remainder of the stud wall out so that I could get at the wiring. This helped a lot and as the studs had to come out anyway I was still making progress. After that I had to go to my circuit breaker box and figure out what unlabeled switch shut the power off to this wiring. After ten minutes or so I found the right switch and then could open up the electrical box. It was simply wired as three black wires and three white wires together. Not badly done just badly placed in the basement. Another ten minutes later I figured out that one wire came from the circuit breaker box and the other two wires led to the two rooms now without power. I disconnected everything and pulled the wires out of the electrical box so I could find some other place to mount it so that it would have easier access. Luck was still with me as I found the perfect spot four feet from the wall just near my washer and dryer. Yay!!!! I removed the electrical box and mounted it in the new location and inside twenty minutes I was done.
Now the doorway is nearly ready for framing and the new doors can be installed without having buried electrical boxes in the way. On to the next snafu!
Another mystery electrical job was found.
At the foot of the steps was another electrical box that was tied into a light that was less than worthless to even have been installed. Poor lighting to say the best thing about this light and even worse yet was the box and a mystery transformer were just hanging in between the joists.
This is a good view of what the inside of the electrical box looked like along with the mystery transformer that was plugged into it. No clue as to how long this had been wired like this but no matter what it had to go.
Round two then took place again with the unlabeled circuit breaker box. Luckily this light was was only five steps from the box so I could see if the right switch had been shut off. I killed the power and removed the worthless light and mounted the electrical box and the transformer on the inside of one of the joists that could easily be accessed once again. On to the last task of the day.
The outlet that was mounted on to the wall just under the step had to be looked at to see if it could be moved to a new location where a new wall will be added to close up that end of the workshop. I lucked out with this task as the outlet only need to be removed from one of the studs in the existing wall. This then gave me more than enough wiring to move the outlet into position on the planned wall that will cover the old wall. Pulling the paneling was a snap and so a couple minutes later I had it ready for the new wall which hopefully I will have installed some time this week. I just left the outlet hang for now until the wall is up.
So as I said earlier it has been a good day working on the new workshop. I did not get zapped by electricity, didn't cross wire something and start a fire, and I cleaned up some ugly wiring and electrical boxes that needed to be done anyway. By the way I figured out what that little transformer was for on the second electrical job. That is for my door bell. So now I will still be able to hear someone at my door so I can show off my new workshop or at least the progress I've made on it today.
Have a Happy New Year. I know mine will be a good one if I keep having days like this one.
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