Electrical... AKA the Last Three Weeks of My Life

One advantage of doing a lot of the work on our house ourselves is that we save a lot of money. A disadvantage is that some things take FOREVER! Running electrical has taken forever! Not to mention that we don't know really how to do this, so we've had to have an electrician teach us how to do everything, and he's had to come check on our work throughout the process so that we didn't mess anything up and burn our house down, which again, takes forever.

Three weeks ago, we started drilling holes to run wire, nailing in outlet and switch boxes, and pulling wire. Matt hasn't had much work so he's been working at our house a lot and did most of the work by himself. I have been able to help out at night, however we got to a point where I couldn't really do much. One night after work I went to help Matt at the house and we both were really tired and frustrated after a long day. Within minutes we were both yelling at each other and from that point on, I decided that I would be at the house for support, and spent a lot of hours sweeping. I am basically a professional sweeper now.

Anyway, this picture shows what the boxes look like once all the wires are in and tied together. However they didn't all start off this way...

Before we could tie the wires together, we had to stick them in the boxes. They actually didn't even get put the wire in the boxes until we had approval from the electrician, so they were just hanging out all over the place for like two weeks.

After the wires got put in the boxes, Matt had to tie them together and take off the plastic part to get them ready for the electrician to tie together. Matt was a champion through this whole process. He didn't really know what he was doing, but he had the electrician explain everything and he was able to do it mostly by himself.

You can see how the wire was run to all the outlets. This is just one of like 75 outlets in the house. Poor Matt. I made him run outlets all over the place. I love making practical decisions for my own home. Like how many rooms have an outlet right in the middle of the wall that gets covered up by a dresser? I made Matt run all my outlets on the edges of the rooms in case I put furniture up against the wall, and I also made him put a light switch in our bedroom next to our bed. We have lots of fights about who has to get out of bed to turn off the light... well, problem solved!

All the outlets and lights had to be run on "homeruns" down to the breaker box in the basement. We will barely have enough room in the box for all those wires!

It's going to look a lot different once all the wires get put in the box!

We had to run the "homerun" wires all over the house to get them into the box. It was pretty rough pulling wire all over the house knowing how much that stuff costs per foot. If you have a hard time spending money, DO NOT BUILD A HOUSE. Seriously, you would die knowing how much every little dumb thing costs.

Matt is working on finishing the last few electrical things as I sit here typing. We will have an inspection to make sure the plumbing and electrical looks good and then we can call in the guys to insulate and sheet rock! After that comes finish work, which I can start helping with again! I really want the house to start moving again, this month has been so slow and long!

***I forgot to mention the amazing help of my mom and Jeff a few weekends ago. Jeff was awesome at helping Matt with the electrical, and my mom was a champion of moving lumber. She didn't quite realize how much lumber there was, and how heavy lumber is, or that sometimes lumber tends to get moldy when it is sitting outside from December-February. Haha! Our backyard is totally empty of all lumber now! I need to take a picture of it soon.***