My next project will be the garage. There is one plug against the back wall and one on a side wall. Unacceptable. I'll be putting at least three plugs per wall, maybe more.

We currently have 2 power strips plugged into the back wall receptacle. It looks like that scene in A Christmas Story where they had a ton of stuff plugged into one outlet. The other receptacle is above where I put my workbench but there is no way it will be sufficient for my workbench needs.

It may be a little challenging. The wall that has no receptacles is cinder block. I'll have to do some googling on how to properly attach everything. Not sure how I'll run wire along the other two walls either but I'll figure it out.

The other issue is lighting. There is a single bulb in the ceiling to light the entire garage. Again, unacceptable. I can barely see anything I'm doing. My plan is to hang a couple of 8' florescent lights. The challenge there is the attic. The attic ladder is broken beyond repair and extremely unsafe. I don't really want to tackle that right now so I'll probably get an extension ladder (which I'm sure we'll need anyway).

I can't really start on this yet, though. Our garage is jammed with trash. We've gone on a spending spree to get things we need so we have a ton of boxes and whatever packing stuff that was in the boxes. Might take a while to get it cleared out.

He's asking about what's through the opening to the right when you're sitting on the throne.

you can fir the wall out or more easily just run conduit along and put shallow boxes where ever you want outlets.

Ahhh.. The closet.

Pocket doors never seem to close properly. Maybe there are higher quality ones out there that I haven't seen, but there's always a gap on the side.

This. You may want to add one or more breakers, depending on what you want to do out there.


I love pocket doors.

No way I'm going to furr the wall. Im going with conduit.

These pocket doors are fine. We really dont use them all that much and when we do, they open and close fine.

Has the boat made the trip over yet?

Ugh. No. The lift here is definitely not strong enough. We have a guy looking into it but he's a little flakey. The guy i want to use has covid so he hasn't even looked at it. We can keep it where it is until the end of the month. Hopefully it will be fixed by then.

If I ever build my dream house, all the electricity and plumbing will be external to the walls.

I made a trip to Home Depot and tried to figure out what I needed. Of course, as soon as I got home I realized I got the wrong stuff.

My plan was to add a couple of receptacles along the walls where there were already receptacles. I figured I could get those gang boxes with the little flanges in the back and just put them in new places. But I totally forgot I still have to run wire to them. Ugh. There is a possibility that I can intercept the existing run since I'm putting plugs in between plugs but we'll see. I may go with the phat mack idea and just pull them all out and run them on the outside of the wall. I dunno yet.

On another note, apparently it is a rule that every time I go to Home Depot the weather is fine until I need to leave and then it begins to pour down rain. Sample size of 3.

"Not so fast!", I say to myself. I bought a ladder today and ventured into the attic. I'm pretty sure I can drop wires down the walls. At quick glance it looks like how it was already wired, but I'll have to crawl around some to try to figure out what is going on.

No matter what, this is going to be somewhat painful. But the current situation is unacceptable and I don't want to tackle any other major jobs without a decent workshop.

you can also cut out a channel in a sheetrock wall parallel to the flour and cut a slot in the two by's and run along that inside the sheetrock. then just put a piece of trim board over the exposed channel.
none of the ways are tough to add a receptacle.

Yeah, this might be easier.

I've decided to do this. I'll probably put sheetrock back in the channel, though.

I've also decided to run a second 20 amp circuit. I'm a little nervous that we'll have too much on one circuit by the time we get everything in. I have a small freezer and I'm probably going to get a second larger freezer as well. We have the washing machine on it and I will be running power tools. It would probably be ok with one circuit but I'm already there and the panel is on the wall I'm going to cut the channel in, so why not.

freezer should be on its own circuit. sounds like you need three breakers in that spot.
and you dont want to trip and find your freezer defrosted.
a freezer alarm and an indoor outdoor thermometer to remotely read the temp is smart.

I just took the panel off and there is no more room for anything. However, there is a breaker marked "washer" but there is a hole in the wall right behind the washer that had a receptacle. I need to see if that wire is hot. I'm speculating that there is nothing on that "circuit" anymore. I flipped it off and we can't find anything that was affected. But that still leaves me with just one additional circuit to use.

My plan is to leave most of the existing "stuff" on the current circuit. Lights, garage door opener, washer, 1 receptacle. I need to add one more receptacle for the led hanging lights I ordered. I'll probably disconnect the current light.

Then move three receptacles to the new circuit and add 3 more. I'll use those to plug in the freezer and use power tools. If it trips, so be it. I'm not entirely sure we have the room for a freezer anyway.

And, it looks like all the wire is being dropped from the attic - not run through walls. It's going to be challenging. Hard to get to some spots.

I'm a master electrician. Happy to advise if you get stumped somewhere along the line.

Oh wow. I didn't know that. Thats awesome. I'll definitely lean on you.

so...

My wife offered to paint the door. However, she was upset about the staples on the trim and some of the screws I put in that weren't countersunk properly. The trim was already on the frame when I bought it. I didn't think any of it looked bad, but....

So, I ended up pulling all the trim back off and rehung the door and countersunk the screws. I had the door in pretty well the first shot but struggled to get it back in right. Doors is definitely in my top 5 most hated home projects. And this was a small interior door.

Anyways, some of the trim was damaged so I'll have to make a home depot trip for new trim. I really wanted to get moving on the garage, but priorities, eh?

On the electricity...cut the green wire!

I hate working with doors. I even hate taking them off to paint and then putting them back on.

Cut all the wires! Then start over.

I didn’t paint my new solid wood front door; I varnish it. I bought it unfinished; it was cheaper; and did all the finish work myself. I’m smarter than the average bear!

I got all new trim for the door and got it put on. Looks pretty good. Wife is happy.

We took a piece of trim to home depot to get the paint matched. I was off getting electrical supplies while she got the paint. She commented that the guy was all over the place trying to help several people at once. So, she starts to pain the trim and the paint doesn't match. I mean the trim is some sort of off-white and the new stuff was blue. Not even close. We suspect we got someone else's. They say they don't take paint back but we took pictures so we'll see.

One home depot note. The subdivisions around the home depot are primarily Lennar. Every single time we've been to home depot we've heard other customers mention how bad the Lennar homes are. The paint guy said they've made a small fortune because all of the houses have to be repainted. We've heard so many horror stories, and not just about paint.