Senior Preview

Deb is a Senior! (But you knew that...)

Survival is questionable. Survival at work, survival at home, survival in the sense that there are teenagers in the house and my brain is constantly fried trying to deal with them.

A few weeks back, Deb had her senior pictures taken by a good friend of ours from church who is a professional photographer. The pictures turned out very well, as you can see from the sample above. (Please don't print them; your copies are forthcoming.) In fact, they turned out too well. I'm considering the idea of locking her in her room until she turns 30. Otherwise, she might get bothered by all those horrible "boys". And then I might have to take some serious action.

The amazing thing about the pictures is that, for the first time in memory, she is actually smiling. With teeth. It's a miracle! Probably the only pictures of her teeth that we've ever seen, outside the dentist office.

She is focused now on surviving her senior year, passing her classes, especially the AP classes and the college writing classes. And her job. She's working at Old Navy now. Which leaves her very little time (thankfully!) to deal with icky boys. There is hope for her yet!

:::

There is still nothing definitive on the work side of things. Today was the last day of my contract, but there are two good job opportunities which have come up. I'm still waiting to hear back from them. They both said, "We need someone NOW!" But they're a bit slow on the response time. Either way, I'm not too worried about it. I've got plenty of other work to do around here.  Like the basement. I'll just consider this a cheaper way of getting the work done. Instead of paying someone else to do it, I'll pay myself! And get it done my way!

But in reality, Cheryl won't be happy until I've got another contract and the income is guaranteed. So this week is going to be all about locking down that next job.

:::

On the surface, it seems that a basement wiring should be a simple thing to accomplish. Down in the basement, however, there are all sorts of complications that arise, slowing progress, causing me endless consternation.

I had to add some outlets for the kitchenette which had been overlooked in the drawing; this pushed my load limit over the line for the branch circuits I'd already devised, so it was necessary to create an additional 20-amp branch to cover the microwave and refrigerator. But there was no more room on the basement wall near the breaker panel to run the lines without running into the plumbing and gas lines.

Cramming all those lines on the wall is a bit of a challenge. It would be easier to re-route the wiring in another direction, but that would require drilling holes through a lot of overhead joists, and there's a limit to how many holes can go in them before their strength is compromised. And I'm generally nervous about compromising the strength of structures which are keeping the upper stories from falling on my head.

There's also the issue of needing to cut into existing lines in order to extend a branch to cover a new wall outlet. Especially when the existing lines are behind drywall that cannot be removed because it was glued to the studs by the original builders. (Grumble grumble grumble.) 

This particular branch runs along the top of the south wall near the back windows, dipping down every so often to pick up an outlet which is located by the window ledge. The new wall runs perpendicular to the south wall, forming one of the bedroom walls, and the outlet serves both the living room and the new bedroom. The branch that runs along the top of the south wall is an obvious choice to pull from; unfortunately, the south wall is also the one wall in the basement which was "finished" by the original builders, and instead of simply relying on screws to hold the drywall on the studs, they decided to use Concrete Nails as well. Which means it's very, very messy to try and break into the wall in order to modify the appropriate wires.

There's a solution, of course, but it's tricky.

Obviously, a junction box is required so that the new line can be added in. The problem is that there isn't enough wire available to just drop in a junction box and tie in the new line. Each line into the junction box needs at least six inches of wire inside the box. So it is necessary to add two junction boxes (in series) to give enough slack in the old line. Which makes it a bit messy, but functional.

I checked the code to make sure there was no limit on the number of junction boxes in a line.

There are not.

Still, it's far from ideal. The ideal solution would be to remove the drywall and add the new line directly from the existing outlet, probably running straight across instead of up to the joists and then down again. But then there's all that cleanup. And scraping old glue off studs. Ick.

Some days, there just isn't enough time for ideal.