Electrical

Wrong box for electrical housing...

We had ALL the electrical in the condo re-done. The previous owner believed himself to be a "handy man" and lets just say things were not up to code. Things that needed to be in "high powered boxes" because of the amount of wire and electricity that were in them just weren't... switches were painted over, things were not grounded properly... messed up GFI's... not to mention the broken prongs we found in a few outlets that an "electrician" covered...

Let's just say our new home was looking like a horror story worthy of the Wall of Electrical Shame they have at hubs work, so we paid to have the work done. Our dome light in the master bedroom wasn't even in a box... They ran electrical wires through the dry wall...

They also left live wires in the kitchen and put our pantry over it.... oh ya, and the microwave was wired to the dinning room chandelier....

If hubs did the work himself, it would have been 6 months of weekends, WAY more drywall damage, and too much stress on the good old marriage, not to mention we needed an electrician to do the repairs since we will probably be going to court to sue the prior owners.

So, hubs bought all the parts for the electrical job through his work with his discount, and we purchased three ceiling fans from home depot. (We got a 10% off coupon for Lowe's in the mail, but Home Depot honored it, so we saved $40 since Lowe's didn't have the fans we wanted).

Then we paid an electrician to do the job.

Parts: ($1199.18)...
Labor: ($1850.00)
Ceiling Fans ($382.52)

Total: $3,431.70

We changed all the outlets to tamper proof since we have a toddler who loves to play with those white outlet caps and we re-did all the switches since most had been painted over and wouldn't "switch" easily.

We also went 100% LED. All Can lights are on dimmers, ceiling fans are all hard wired with dimmers, and our bedroom and kitchen can lights also have portable table remotes so when you want to turn off the lights from bed, you can... Same in the kitchen. Since the switches for the kitchen lights and ceiling fan are now on the wall near our front door, we have a remote on the island for a quick tap to turn the lights on. It's pretty legit.

We removed the mini wall that was
supposed to be a pantry that had
been converted into a desk.... with
really bad electrical.

We also put in can lights in our bathroom since our new bathroom mirror and cabinet will also have LED lighting -- so bye bye harsh all or nothing bathroom lighting and we have a super awesome bathroom vent that moves air properly. We also installed some hallway night lights for those evening trips to the lavatory or kitchen where a miss placed toy can end your life if you aren't looking carefully...

TV mount box and kit were installed. We are planning for the same Ikea set up we did in the last place, but that will come after paint and flooring.  We decided can lights would be better than a ceiling fan in the living room, since it's a larger area where more gathering takes place and a ceiling fan wouldn't be enough light.

We fixed the kitchen lighting by adding 3 new cans, moving an existing one, and removing the dangle lights that didn't hang down the same height. We also removed the chandelier that hubs hit his head on 4 times in the first week of living there and knocked out a wall by our front door to open the space up. We added a ceiling fan for extra air flow with a light kit to cover the dinning room. We also re-did the entire GFI system in the house.

Can lights and a ceiling fan went into our bedroom since the room was large enough for both and a ceiling fan along would not provide enough light. We also added power to the closet for our closet light bars and added a few USB outlets where the night stands should be.

Little Dudes room got a ceiling fan and an extra outlet along the closet wall in case we need power when we turn that into his toy space.

We added power to our outside "shop closet" and a permanent light fixture, and changed the outside outlet and cover so it could lock to keep little man out.