The LittleTractor Blog

Just so you all didn’t think I dropped off the face of the planet, past two weeks I’ve been working hard on this. It really IS a team effort tho, LTGal, Kidlets 1 and 2 on the weekends when they’re here, LTBabe hauling tools for us, even the in-laws got drafted into hauling down the new-to-us futon..

So, on to some pix of progress… First, three pix from the same view as my earliest posts

Its coming… Gotta get the rest of the trim done, get the mitre saw out, decide when we’re going to put down the flooring in the hallway, get the rest of the networking stuff tidied into the rack, set up the TV…

Okay, now onto the part I like best… MY space! The proto-Man-Cave!

Still a bit of a disaster area from THIS angle, need to do some tidying and sorting yet

Got all the sound-dampening insulation finished up today… Rocksul Safe-and-Sound, I’d highly recommend it as its a HECK of a lot easier to work with than Fibreglass Pink… Its spun from rock. So, good fire rating, easy to cut with a serrated knife, AND it doesn’t make you itchy like Pink does…

Okay, so I didn’t do such a great job on the door… Here’s where I slipped and put my knee through it while trying to fix…

THIS! Whoops, guess I shoulda paid a bit more attention to which way those hinges were supposed to mount when I was cutting the frame down by the 3 inches I needed to cut it down. Pre-hung, my butt!

However, THIS makes it all worth it. 80 bux of premium peg board along the whole wall where my work bench goes!

Even behind the door, so I can hang long things up in fairly unused space, with my toolbox tucked out of the way..

My OWN heat take-off, done by a friend this weekend (I’d wind up in ICU if I tried tin-work on my own!)

And the lovely diffuser!

And, of course, the ONE thing my man-cave could not possibly be without! 

Well, I wound up hanging out down in the proto-mancave Saturday night ’cause LTGal’s laptop hard drive packed and I had to clear off my spare external to restore her backups to, so I had a fair bit of time to ponder the wiring question… And I figured, well, I could probably relocate all the wiring for my man cave on my own… Just moving a switch and pushing two light fixtures back a joist or two… Yeah… I can DO that! So, I suggested it to LTGal, and we made a stop at RONA Sunday  afternoon to pick up the light fixtures she wanted to swap around… So, off came the panelling where the existing switch was, then nailed down where all my tools were that I needed BEFORE I turned off the breaker… Off with the breaker.. Disconnect the first fixture and pull the wiring back… Well, while I’m doing that, might as well take the rest of the strapping that the wiring was hooked to down, DOH can’t find the wrecking bar in the dark! Finally find it in the bin-o-many tools, 20 minutes beating up on some old strapping. Well, then, you know, I wanna do this move right, so I should really run the wiring through the joists, not surface mounted on the joists like it WAS. So I pull out the big drill and the 1″ spade bit and drill 7 new holes… DANG this old growth Douglas Fir they built my house outta is HARD… Mount the boxes, re-run the wire, break for supper… LTGal says, are you ready to go live yet? Anything you need help with? Well, she COULD pull down the fixture outta the laundry room that she wants me to swap into my space… Okay… Then she comes to help me put up the fixtures, ’cause she’s better on ladders than I am… DOH, I mounted the boxes recessed, and the fixtures require them to be out a half an inch… Down come the boxes, find two other octagonals that have the mount points appropriate for these fixtures… Up go the new boxes… Good thing I wrote down how the wiring went by this point… Just staple up the wire to where I gotta feed the switch down through the wall, we’re gonna leave that for another day, ’cause the two of us AND LTBabe working on electrical is a lotta work…

Took Tuesday morning off work to pull the paneling off the wall, run the switch wire to its spot, mount the box, put the switch in the box, tuck-tape the vapor barrier, cut the hole in the paneling, put the paneling back up, discover that I’m an idiot because the switch should go OUTSIDE the paneling before screwing it into the box, cut the hole bigger so I can get the switch out through it, re-screw the switch onto the box, then finally put the plate back on.

Yes,  it took me the whole morning! I would be one DANG expensive electrician, if I were charging myself! 

(I DID have to tidy so that I’d have enough room to actually work).

And the REAL electrician is showing up at 8 tomorrow morning! Yay! Guess I coulda saved this for him… But, saved a bit of money, got to have some good family electrocution time, there ya go!

Anyways, some pix!

My quarry!

Where it’s SUPPOSED to be!

Naked electrical!

The old fixture on its way down… Notice the box mounted on the surface of the joist, and the wire running along the surface of the joist…

A pic of the wiring, for future reference when I go to hook it back up

Voila! The new fixtures up…

And lookit the NICE holes somebody drilled!

The box mounted, the vapor barrier all nicely tuck-taped, I EVEN got one of those nice hoodie pieces they say to put around your boxes so that it ties into the vapor barrier nicely!

The switch mounted… Just kinda wrong…

Et, tut FINI! Notice, I lined up the screws horizontally on the plate. I hear real electricians are particular about that…

Time to put in some more light bulbs, then have a rum break!

Well…. Just in case you were wondering what I’ve been up to…. Here’s my weekend…. Crack of dawn Saturday….

– Intermission on Saturday afternoon, to haul 300 KG of garbage to the dump with LTGal… Then back at it… Moving, sorting throwing… Something I never DID get any pictures of (more’s the pity) was the really BAAAADD late 60s bar lighting I had over my computer warren… Basically some pretty poorly built bulkheads hanging from the ceiling, with three potlights mounted in it. I liked it ’cause the potlights gave off a reasonable amount of light… However, they had to go if we were going to do anything with the ceiling OR the wiring for the rest of the area… So off went the breaker, out came the bolt cutters and the sawzall…

I’ve been at it all day again today, moving my networking closet and rewiring… Any of you geeks out there know what kind of big job that is, even in a small building… Considering I’ve got every room in the house wired, and I’ve had to run wire back to where MY new space will be, its been busy…

Here’s my progress from today… Wall is open ’cause the electrician may be coming tomrrow-er, well, later today now I guess… Off to bed for me now…

Wow, yes, today was crazy busy, got a LOT done… We started out with LTGal getting a notice from someone on our local Freecycle who was getting rid of a “Flat-Screen TV”, which we were all over, until the person called us and I said, “My wife will be right over to get it,” and the lady said “Well, she should bring someone to help her lift it”. Uh oh… Well, LTGal and Kidlet #1 went ANYWAY (since Kidlet #1 is the one who wants the TV room)… It turned out to be, just as I suspected, the 1980s version of the “Flat Screen”, which was a CRT TV with a MASSIVE front plate of glass with optics built in, thereby making the front of the TV, um, flat. So, being good citizens, and realizing that the older lady whose TV it WAS would NOT have been able to get rid of it any other way, they took it anyway… straight to the recyclers.

In the meantime, LTBabe and I laid more flooring and dismantled the cruddy olt tin shelves… Well, actually, LTBabe watched Max and Ruby on Netflix, and I did the rest… This afternoon, when Kidlet #2 was dropped off from her sleepover, I, with great cunning, said “Sure, why don’t you have your friend stay over at OUR place tonight!”, and then LTGal and I put them to work hauling and demolishing and minding LTBabe and (of course) ripping apart hard drives… The other dad thought that was a HECK of a good idea! No, seriously, he did! He even took a big batch of the strapping that LTGal had pulled down this morning to burn in his fireplace (its CERTAINLY well seasoned, and comes with bonus cobwebs for extra flammability). I have to say, tho, I’m pretty dang lucky, the kids even made us supper!

Okay, okay, onto the pictures… First, some comparison shots taken from the same vantage point as my first set on Day 1

Lotsa change here…

And here… Losing a whole desk really brings out the bike in the room!

Hmmm… not much change here…

LTGal and I and Mr. Wrecking Bar got all the framing from around the ductwork cleared, and LTGal made great progress on the strapping on the ceiling.

Got a fair bit of subfloor to put down yet, tho…

Next steps, well, finishing up my desk so I can start migrating computers over… Running ethernet and telephone through the joists to the far end of the basement too… Getting the still messy end all sorted and purged and cleaned out…

Of course, its snowed, so now I gotta take some time off from renos to get some seat time…

Some more work from last night…. Getting more subfloor down, as we migrate stuff around to clear the floor…

And clearing the old bulkhead off the hot air ducting so that we can get a bit of HVAC work done…

This was a bit of an unpleasant surprise, but not all that surprising as we’ve found a couple of other places in the house where there’s been some hack-jobs done on the ductwork… Not QUITE as bad as the “load bearing” ductwork we found in the laundry room some years ago, where a previous owner had sheet-metal screwed a laundry station to the ductwork to anchor it. Thank goodness for tin tape!.

Next steps, pulling the rest of the old strapping off the ceiling so that we have a clear run for network wiring and electrical, putting up more shelving units so we can clear more floor for more flooring, THEN I start dismantling desks from the other end of the room and packing up tools… Or possibly we start framing the partition wall…