Tuesday

 

Today was all about lights and electricity, both in the heavens and in our house. We thought the electricians were going to do just a few things. I think they did almost everything. You can see the mini-LED lights above where the range goes, and beyond you can see the underlight that will one day light up the backsplash and countertop. All of these lights are on a dimmer.

We had at least three guys working all day, from just before 8:00 until 3:00. Their boss came by at the end of the day to point out a few errors that were then corrected (wrong light color, missed outlet, etc.). The Ottoson boss came by at one point to discuss logistics with the electricians. The accent lights on the plant shelves in the kitchen and living room have not yet been installed, but they did remove the florescent fixtures, seven all together. In their place will be an LED rope light from one end to the other. 

They put in the new LED lights in the ceiling. They are flush and very bright. The minis above the range are the same color, just a smaller size.

Here's everything on dim.

New switches and dimmers.

They replaced all the plugs to match the rectangular style of the new switches.

New ceiling fan in the eat-in kitchen

New ceiling fan in the living room, in a larger size than the one in the eat-in kitchen

LED dimmable lights in both ceiling fans

The undercounter light is embedded into the wood cabinet. It's flush with the bottom. It is so cool, and dimmable. John's worried that the white electrical outlets are going to be the focal point and not the blue backsplash.

Undercounter light

The new ceiling LED dimmable lights overhead.

The eat-in kitchen fan switch is in the middle, controls speed, light brightness, and on/off.

Same for the living room fan. The blue light helps you to find the switch in the dark. The light dimmer includes the two small buttons at the top: smaller for dim, larger for bright. The large button controls fan speed: low, medium, and high.

Kitchen lights on with the living room off. The undercounter lights will be lighting up the blue backsplash soon. I don't think the white outlets will be too distracting. The solution to that would be to have a strip of outlets under the cabinets way up high, but then you'd have to stoop to find them and your electrical cords would be dangling down whenever you plug something in.

Eat-in fan and light.

Plug for dishwasher. There's a little hole to patch.

Plug for range

Plug for fridge. Ottoson will level out the floor before putting in the fridge. The water line has to wait for the plumbers, and they're not coming until after the countertops are in, but maybe Ottoson can connect it at the refrigerator end. A waterline box goes near the baseboard with a shutoff valve.

Plug for microwave

Plug for the disposal. Waterline waiting for the plumber. Sink drain, hot and cold water.

The electricians installed four hard-wired smoke/fire detectors to go with the one we already had and one carbon monoxide detector per current building code. 

After the workers left, we played with the lights and set up the backsplash. They look darker in pictures. 

Up close. We're not sure we're going to like these. We kind of like the soft gray color of the wall paint. Oh, well. We wanted some drama. The blue backsplash will certainly be dramatic.

We were lucky today. I was even lucky when I dropped my peanut butter slice of bread on the bathroom floor and it landed peanut butter side up! I was so hungry I picked it up, slapped jelly on the other slice, and ate it.

We've had strong winds all day, up to 25 mph, along with tornado watches. But it has been 75 degrees so I'm not complaining. We will soon have a strong band of thunderstorms passing through. Lots of lightning to go with our new indoor lights.

What's next? I think the Ottoson folks will install our refrigerator and microwave. They may even install the accent lights on the plant shelves. The lights are low voltage LED. Things are moving faster than we feared. It would be great if the countertops are ready sooner than three weeks. We should be meeting with the designer soon to discuss the next project.