New House Blog: Episode VIIII - Electrification

Welcome to Episode VIIII - Electrification.  Once again you will notice my use of the less-common-but-still-valid Roman Numeral notation.  And that's all I'm going to say about that.  Also, once again, you will notice that it has been several days since the last Episode.  This is because of the increase in actual house-work time that has left less time for blogging about housework.  Keep checking back, because our update schedule is not set and updates could appear at any time.

This Episode deals mainly with electricity and electrical components.  Our house, being over 40 years old, had some old-fashioned two-prong outlets, and it only had one GFCI outlet in one bathroom.  Modern-day houses and apartments have no two-prong outlets, and they usually have at least one GFCI outlet in each bathroom.  Being the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) types, we decided to modernize and upgrade these outlets ourselves.  That being said, we did all/most of the electrical outlet changing after consulting with one of our electrician brothers, Mike.  His advice was, and is continuing to be, most valuable to us.  We do have a few things to cover before getting to the outlets, though.  

Spigots

We replaced a leaky hose-spigot in our back yard with a shiny new non-leaky hose-spigot.  Note the use of plumber's tape.

Doorstops

Our house was mostly lacking in doorstops.  This was a problem, because doorknobs had hit walls, and holes and dents had been made.  Here you can see the worst of the damage - the door to what will be Mark's office had at some point made a complete hole in the wall.  Evidence at the scene suggests that it may have been patched in the past and this may be a second hole.  We will discuss the patching of holes in a later Episode.

A plastic plate does not a proper patch make

The full extent of the damage behind the plastic plate

This is what the damage looked like initially.  Note the attempt at hiding the hole.

Here is that same hole with the camouflage removed.

To prevent more doorknob-related holes in our walls we installed doorstops on all of the doors that did not have them and were is a position to potentially cause holes and/or dents.  Here is a picture of one of the doorstops.  Note that it is a generic spring-type doorstop, the kind that cats like to play with.  We're only showing you one doorstop because they all look alike.

This is the front door's doorstop.

Electrification

Now we charge on to the main event.  Before we go any further, we must advise and admonish you that before you do any electrical work be sure that the appropriate breakers/fuses are turned off.  All of our  electrical work has been done only after turning off the appropriate breakers.  That said, on to the work we did.  

In our master bedroom we swapped out all four (yes there are only four electrical outlets, with two plugs each) outlets with brand-new tamper-resistant 3-prong grounded outlets.  In our bathrooms we swapped out all of the outlets with brand new GFCI outlets.  In the garage and kitchen we swapped out a few outlets with recessed outlets.  This was done mainly because the old outlets were poorly mounted.  

Tamper-resistant, in this case, means that the plugs each have a plastic piece inside that blocks the holes until something is plugged in.  The idea is that this will make it harder for young children to accidentally stick things into electrical outlets.  We don't have any kids, but it still seemed like a good idea.  

GFCI stands for Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor.  It is an electrical outlet with a built-in breaker.  Typically they are used in bathrooms, or other places where water and electricity are in close proximity.  The ones in our apartment have red and black buttons.  The ones in our house have white buttons.  Here is a link to an article that describes them in more depth.

Behold, a cavalcade of outlets.

A brand-new grounded outlet being installed

A typical outlet after installation

If you look closely you should be able to see the plastic inside the prong-holes.

















Notice the beautiful texture of the wall behind this outlet.

A typical GFCI outlet

A relocated recessed outlet

A recessed outlet in the garage

This outlet was relocated on the advice of brother Mike.  Can you spot where it used to be?

As you might have guessed, this outlet is located in a section of wall that was repaired at some point in the past.  That is not genuine drywall tape, however.  We may add proper drywall tape and joint compound at some future date.

The Burning Question

We thought we'd conclude this electrifying Episode with something truly shocking, and yet another surprise from this old house.  What you see below is what you do not want to find when you open up your electrical outlet.  

The box and romex

The outlet

You see all of the black inside the box?  That is the result of burning and charring sometime in the past.   The wire-cutting was done by us.  The romex* in the wall outside of the box was undamaged, and we were able to successfully relocate this outlet (it is not, however, the relocated outlet pictured above).  There was no damage visible on the wall around the outlet, but it's possible that any discoloration of the wall was simply painted over.










This is the actual outlet that we pulled from the burned box above.  Again, black = burnt.

The backside of the outlet

The backside of the outlet.

Where there's smoke there's

  bIsh

*Romex, as used here, refers to the 3-wire, plastic-sheathed electrical cable.  Romex is a brand name, but it is also used generically, much like Kleenex or Coke.