A Shocking Start

While work progresses on the outside of the house, we continue to plod along inside with various projects.  The latest efforts have been toward finishing the electrical in the kitchen.  As with so many things in life, in order to complete one thing you have have back waaaaaay up and do 3 other things first.  The end goal is the of course have a kitchen, but a sooner goal is to have all 4/5 walls of my kitchen drywalled.  (Remember, my room is an oddly shaped dining room/kitchen combination of 4 walls and in one place 5.) 

The original kitchen in this place was a tiny, little hot mess with a wall oven, push button cooktop, pendant sink light, fridge and not much else.  Think about all of the electrical needs in today's typical kitchen, dishwasher, under/above cabinet lighting, recessed ceiling lighting, fridge, island, wall oven, range, etc.  Anyone else seeing an issue here?  Yeah, not nearly enough power in the kitchen.  It was at that point I realized that I had to pick which appliances I wanted.  Wonderful, something else to do before doing the thing I wanted to do.  You see, without knowing which appliances I want, it's almost impossible to know where to spec the electrical and once the drywall in is, it would be a HUGE pain, not to mention mess to change it.

While you might think that it would be a blast picking a kitchen full of appliances, it's hard when you've already made yourself a promise.  From the very beginning of this house project, I've promised myself that I would never settle for less than what I wanted, really wanted, instead I would just do without.  (hmm, so far I'm doing good.  Hence the reason I've been living with studs for 2 years.)  All in all, it's been easy to keep this promise to myself.  I live alone and function okay without certain things, like a stove.  Grits, my favorite work breakfast and chicken are easy to make on my hot plate.  Just think about how much easier it will be to make them when I have this installed.

Oh a girl can dream!!  Top it off with a super ventilation system and this girl would be in heaven.

Not to worry you, I haven't left reality.  Here is a more current kitchen pic.

Notice the hours of work?

Each little caption is equivalent to hours of work in a relatively clean attic, several feet of expensive wire (ouch,) new switches and only a couple of drops of blood.  What's the most depressing part of it all?  Once the drywall is up, no one will ever know the hours of work involved.  Instead, a switch will flip and a light will come on or something will move and no one will think twice, so I'm calling a moment for you to appreciate all this hardwork.

Even though there are hours of hardwork behind us, and now a well appreciated electrical plan has been laid into place, a large piece is still missing.  Remember my sentence from above?  (It's okay, I know there were a tons of sentences from above, so I'll help you out.)  Think about all of the electrical needs in today's typical kitchen, dishwasher, under/above cabinet lighting, recessed ceiling lighting, fridge, island, wall oven, range, etc.  Do you see it?  No?

that little word,

such a simple word,

island...

Remember my floor??

No?

I'll remind you next time...