Plan with the END in mind.

I should be really good at this as my everyday job requires me to do so but I'm not doing so well.  A lot of the electrical work has been done in the last couple of weeks.  Now, we are required to give the exact locations for lighting fixtures such as sconces and chandeliers.  Well to know how high, low, how far apart etc. the sconces should be, you have to know the sizes of your mirrors.  If we had them, this task would've been very easy but we haven't had a chance to purchase these items so we are guestimating their sizes for now.

 

We had to walk through the house with the electrician so that he can mark where we wanted to put light switches.  We had to imagine how we were going to really use our space.  You don't want to have to walk across a dark room to turn on the light so the location of the light switch is really important.  At times, the location of the switch was limited because of the physical layout of the room such as the way the door swings.  This was the case in our front hallway.  You can't have a switch behind a door and there isn't enough space on the other wall so we had to put the switch a little further down the hall.  I wanted to put a good size console table in the hallway with a mirror on top but now with the switch in the way, I will have to change my plans.

We decided to go with two electrical panels.  One in the garage and one in the laundry room.  Why two panels?  Just cleaner when you run the wires.

After almost two years of not being able to use two appliances at the same time and having to run extension cords everywhere, we are NOT going to be short with outlets again.  Actually, it's by code that you have to have an outlet for every 6 feet of wall space.  I'm glad that this building code is in place!

I can't remember why we need this many switches for our ensuite!

Catching Up

It has been a very busy month at work so I have been neglecting my blog for a while.  Now, I have a lot of catching up to do.  Over the March Break, I went to the brick supplier to pick out the bricks and stones.

Scott couldn't make it so I made the executive decision.  I like the rustic look of this brick called Vienna.

I went with this stone called Indiana limestone.  I think we're going with this pattern.  Why change something that works right?  Maybe I'm playing it safe...

With Winter behind us, we are going ahead with bricking the house.  Bricks are delivered in small batches because of the lack of space in our small yard.

The masonries worked very fast!  In two days, they had half of the wall done.

Scott thought the bricks look a little too red.  Too late for that now!!

As quickly as these guys are working, we have scheduled 4 weeks for the brick and stone work to be done.  That leaves us only 4 months to finish the inside.  We were hoping to move in before school starts again in September.  It's going to be close.  Scott's being optimistic.  I'm just keeping my fingers cross that everything will just go smoothly from here on. :)