Electrifying our Small House

NON Electrical Prelude: I'm back to blogging! I apologize for being away for so long. These last few months have been a whirl wind of working towards our Certificate of Occupancy so we may continue to work on our house whilst living in it. We gained our CO about one month ago and we have been moving ever since (after we finished the shower, of course). We are now occupying with a fully functional, but slightly unfinished kitchen, one mostly finished bathroom, and various project throughout. It is still a lot of work but it is glorious! We are so happy to be in and living in our Beekeeper's Bungalow is just as great as we imagined!

Electrical in our Modified Beekeeper's Bungalow:

Below you will find a modified version of the original Beekeeper's Bungalow electrical plan created by The small House Catalog.

First Floor Electrical Plan

Second Floor Electrical Plan

Our electrical took three times as long as we estimated and cost twice as much. If you have ever built or planned a house or remodeled, think back to when you start discussing details. Your partner throws out "hey, let put an extra switch here". You casually respond "Oh and how long will that take and about how much"

"Oh, about 5 min and about $10"

"Well, that's not bad. Let's do it"

Well, this happens more than once. More than 10 times and it is not actually 5 min or $10. It is more than the time it takes to wire one box. It is also the time it takes to add another circuit, to wire that box into the circuit and to purchase, yet another, expensive roll of wire. It is also the time and cost of running to the hardware store AGAIN because all these extras are adding up and you didn't anticipate all the extra wire needed for the extra circuits because they weren't on the original lighting design. It is also the cost of the extra boxes, outlets or switches, plates and loss of wall space. It is the time to wire yet another outlet or switch and the time you may need to go and fix it because you were exhausted and working late and may have forgot to make a connection. When building consider each outlet and switch carefully. If you are building yourself, question every thing you add for convenience and remember, this is a small house so, really, how many steps will it actually be to turn off that light and maybe a little exercise won't kill ya because then when you get to running electrical you can eat dinner or get a night off to enjoy ice cream with your kids. I speak from experience.

Our initial order from Lowe's. Just a drop in the bucket!

Getting the second floor boxes up and running circuits.

HOWEVER, now that our electrical is done and we are living in the house I can say that most of it was well planned and well executed and may actually be worth all of the effort. There are still some things I would change, IF I could go back in time, to get the extra time back but I can't. Since we are both quality freaks, Garrett especially, we worked to both the IRC code and the NEC code which our county, to some extent, follows. Given our abundance of research we still missed some things on our plumbing/electrical walk through.

1) We didn't need to use the new total GFCI breakers until next year. These breakers ran us about $40/each while standard breakers run about $5/each. Silver lining: our whole house is GFCI protected.

2) Our exterior hose bibs needed to have back flow preventers. This means if there is a leak or break that water cannot run back into the pipes and cause damage, or further damage, to the house. So we purchased some frost free, back flow prevented sillcocks online.

3) We didn't label our fuse box correctly. While it was neat and adequately labeled when the inspector looked at it to determine that the kitchen had the minimum number of circuits, the inspector could not determine from his cursory glance which circuits were for the kitchen. Granted he was not familiar and was looking for the keyword "kitchen". We labeled each circuit with the major appliances or outlets it supplied, I.E. microwave and wall outlets, instead of "kitchen microwave and wall outlets" . So we had to write in "Kitchen" where it applied. It sounds petty but it is really not. Our inspector was currently the only inspector in the county and, thus, very busy. He was very nice but no- nonsense. If he looked for it but couldn't find it, it went on the list. In the end it is all for safety so making sure he was satisfied is important to us.

Living room boxes are up!

Getting the fuse box started.

After about 4-5 weekends and maybe one solid week of running electrical we passed our joint plumbing and electrical inspection and began getting ready for insulation. We opted for a eco-friendlier version that is water based. This product has been ruled Environmentally responsible. This classification is important to us. We are determined to be as energy efficient and environmentally responsible as we can be. We will discuss insulation more in our upcoming post on the process and I'll discuss living in it as we go. I've included some great shots of some of the electrical finished with fixtures. I am looking forward to posting interior shots as we get unpacked.

This is going to be one sexy kitchen thanks to all this wiring.

The kitchen shortly before we moved in. You can see the outlets installed but plates aren't on yet.

You can see the awesome track lights from IKEA all the way through to the dining room, which features a bras chandelier that I bought from Habitat Restore for $12. I painted it with home brewed chalk paint and dark wax.

#Electrical #Buildingasmallhouse #Lighting #DIY #SmallHouse #Houseplans