Thursday, March 31, 2011

Status in stasis

Woah, it has been a little while since the last post. Sorry for the lack of communication everyone. We've had a bit of a rough time with flu season, it seemed like Amanda and I were taking turns playing a terrible game of disease ridden hot-potato. We have had varied delays and distractions with our second story renovation; although, I'd bet that if I tried hard enough, I could attribute most of the delays to my laziness.

The renovation project is slowly coming along. During the weekends I have been able to dedicate a majority of my time to installing fiberglass insulation. However, there have been a few distractions worth mentioning.

A good portion of a Saturday was spent designing and building a new HVAC duct box for the wall registers. Originally, one duct was split between the two bedrooms by a pair of dilapidated registers. The new box will accept louvered registers, which can be adjusted independent of one another. I'm super pleased with the results.

A few days were alloted for installing lighting in the attic. While we do not intend to spend any significant amount of time in the attic, the addition of overhead lighting will make any work up there a little more bearable. A total of five CFL lamps were installed in stratigic spots with an illuminated toggle switch near the entrance hatch.

While crawling around in the attic, I also installed an empty junction box for future work. My dad had some spare 12/3 wire from another project. I was able to terminate one end in the future box, and coil the other end up inside the circuit breaker panel. The 12/3 wire can be connected, when needed, to establish two separate networks in the future.

During the renovation, I decided to run CAT-5 ethernet lines in the two bedrooms. However, I have been hesitant to terminate the ethernet lines, as I would need to chop a hole in the wall of my den. A weekend and a half was spent excavating and fishing lines through the walls. We installed Class-2 boxes in Amanda's craft room as well as my den for the network connections. Eventually I may install a patch panel, but for now there is a multiport coverplate with a few RJ-45 receptacles on my wall.

It seems that most of my side-projects are the never-to-be-seen type of projects. Ah, c'est le vie. I'll try to include some photos in the next post.