Electrical demolition...

This past weekend's major project was working on the electrical. I decided to keep it simple and just redo everything. I've got some pictures up in the gallery.

A new name for the blog...

"Atomic Dog" was just a name I came up with because it was a play on a friend's "Radioactive Cat" blog. Since Grace and I have been watching a ton of "This Old House" lately, decided to rename it to "Our Old House".

A new toy for the project!

New tools are always fun. When we were working on repainting the outside of the house later last year, we discovered the window frame was rotted and wound up replacing a whole section of wall. One thing I learned was how to recreate a window frame. I managed it pretty well with the tools we had, but couldn't help but think that I could have done a better job with a router.

Enter... the router. Not cheap, but really a very, very versatile tool, and with four windows needing to be reframed, it's becoming more and more a necessity. Plus, we'll be able to use it again on many other projects in the future! Thanks to Kelley Nelson for pointing me to CPO Bosch which sells factory refurbished Bosch power tools. Got my router for about $50 less than retail, and it's still got a full warranty.

A router alone is pretty useless - you need the bits. Stopped at the Lowes, and individual bits were over $30! My mom and dad, always a great resource for woodworking and houseworking info, pointed me to MLCS, who had a really nice 33 bit kit for only $99! $3 a bit or over $30... and these are bits my folks have been using for a couple years now. Yeah. Hard call there.

Remove a wall... add a wall...

John Schwarz, our contractor helping us with the first floor project, stopped by yesterday as we were doing electrical demo to take a look at our progress. I showed him what we had done with removing the wall, and we talked about the next steps. I'll be redoing the electric and heating, but we'll be needing John's help on several of the tasks.

One of my concerns with the project is existing sag in the floors, both getting rid of it as much as is practical, and preventing future problems. All of the floors in the house have the same design, with joists running from one side of the house to the other, interrupted by the opening for the staircases. Running parallel to the staircase is a single joist, which is toe nailed into the main joists in either end.

Still alive...

Yeah, we're still here and we're still working on the house. Haven't had much chance to do any updates. I have uploaded pictures of the demolition to the gallery, and did some commenting. Also split up the gallery into major subprojects so it didn't get too many pictures all in one gallery.