We Have A New Electrical Service!

Well the day finally came on Friday to get a new electrical service! Most of it is done - the electrician was going to come back today to fix up some stuff - but I think he's holding off since we have some guys installing new gutters today. Gutter installer guys are pretty crazy.

Here's a friendly reminder of how we lived for the past year. We had 1 outlet in the kitchen (and it was hanging by a cord, resting on the radiator. Nice, huh?) Other rooms had either 1 or 2 outlets. Now, every room has 5 outlets and the kitchen has a whopping 8. I'm tempted to find 16 things to plug in the kitchen - but I honestly don't think we have 16 things that plug in.

Here's James' fancy wiring job. Dave the electrician thought he did a great job and told me if James is ever looking for work to have him call him. Many a hours were spent running these wires. I'm sure if you added up all the numbers of hours James spent on electric work it would be a good couple weeks, if not a month or two, of time spent on it.

Here's our new panel. Wow. Fancy. It has 40 slots in it. We currently have 22 filled. I asked James why needed such a big one. He said if we ever have plans like getting an addition, a hot tub or adding power to the shed we'd need extra slots. I like his future plans!

Wow! Lights!

I'm actually really happy with how the kitchen looks. We used these small recessed lights (they were on clearance at Lowe's) - James was mad at his position of them after he installed them. I thought they wouldn't provide enough light. But now that we actually have the means to turn them on, they actually look really nice. Unfortunately, they are so bright, I'm going to actually have to keep the kitchen clean now. Oh man!

James Should Be So Proud - He Built A Staircase!

James finished up the staircase about 2 months ago. It was around the time my camera broke so I didn't capture pictures of it. I don't think I took any pictures of what it was like before hand, but it's much better now!

He built the supports and made it extremely strong!

The stairs - we'll finish them off some day but that's not a priority right now!

Where the yellow wire in the top left hand corner was where the door going down once was. Now it is where the front closet use to be.

These are the main stairs. We just happened to remove the pink carpet from them around the same time as James built the stairs. They aren't in too bad of shape. We just need to sand them and finish them off.

Still Doing the Stairs!

This weekend was a lazier one. Saturday, James had his last class until the middle of September! Yey! I don't know what we're going to do with ourselves having Daddy home 2 days in a row EVERY week! I guess we'll finally get our kitchen done - that's what we're going to do!

James continued prepping the stairs. He just added some support to new places since we're changing the layout of the stairs. We have all the parts and hopefully, cross the fingers, should finish up the stairs this coming weekend. I actually made plans with some mother friends so I can get out of the house with Ben and Tom Saturday morning so James can actually do work without me bothering him.

In other home improvement news, we're getting our dumpster today! Yey! I'm so excited. Now I can put the garbage that has been accumulating in our backyard in the dumpster and the neighbors won't call us trash anymore!

Back to Work!

The fun and excitement of Ben's birthday has ended...well at least when it comes to our free time. Ben is busy playing with all his new toys.

Today, we cut out our front closet to make it the entrance to the basement. This way, we'll be able to board up the current door to the basement so we can (cross the fingers) have room to put the 11 cabinets we ordered!!