Thread: So I woke up on Saturday and bought a house.

Thanks for the overview. I have to get more familiar with home AC wiring obviously. What you said makes sense though having only ever dealt with this stuff a little bit.

Speaking of, our central electrical box is made by Federal Pacific and since the 60's have been known to catch fire at random. Apparently the breakers attach to the two main feed rails with pins. The two main feed rails are thin blade types with holes along it. Then the breakers slide over the rail and a pin slides through both the breaker and the rail to secure it. I don't even know if they are tightened down or not. Obviously over time corrosion can become a problem and then you get resistance, then heat, then fire. We knew about it when we bought the house and have budgeted for it's replacement very soon. We will have an electrician come out and replace it (keeping in mind we'd like to ad a sub-box and 220v in the garage sometime along the line) and at the same time probably add chassis grounds for all of the outlets. Currently none of the outlets have a dedicated chassis ground (in 59 years no one has thought to ground this place) and they all have annoying two-prong receptacles except for the kitchen which has the three-prong ones (for convenience) but are still not grounded.

Lots of electrical stuff to get done! I'm hopeful I'll have the knowledge to wire up the garage once that time comes. It can't be that hard.

I know it's been a while, but things are moving along well for the house. I've got some updates to post. I'll start with the walk-through that I promised earlier. I'll probably do another one once the place gets finished the way we'd like it.

Dood I love it! Awesome place!

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Pics.





















This room is pretty tough to get a good picture of.

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Facebook album permalink (in case the images don't show up in the future).

I absolutely want to get rid of the center support columns in the garage. I might just go with stronger joists and call it a day, but I'm seriously considering extending the slap back another 6-10 feet and building an entirely new structure.






Completely cleaned out, the garage will fit two small cars and not much else. If I extend it back some I will have a great work area. Also need to insulate and get some sort of A/C going on. Right now there are no doors on it, so I can't even store my tools in it. Lots of stuff that belongs out here is still being stored in the house. =(


I'm so glad we were able to get a decent sized yard around here (even if it is mostly in the back). So many places around here have postage stamp lots.


The shed has the lawnmower and that's about it. Plenty of room to extend the garage back if I decide to.


Frisbee anyone?


Like I said... Plenty of room behind the garage.


Katie really gets around.

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Pictures I took to document the lot survey we had done. The edging and all fences around our house are all completely within our lot. We fully lucked out on that one.

Our neighbor's driveway is literally at the edge of their property line, leaving all the edging within ours.








Lot marker on the South side of the front.


All the bushes are in our lot.




We at least have a bit of distance between our neighbors. I didn't want to be able to touch their house and mine at the same time. So many places around here are right next to each other.


A look across the front yard.


So yah, I guess I took a picture of the attic next?
The insulation was also put under all the floorboards as well. We really lucked out there too.




And here is Darwin, finally under some protection and happy as can be.

Time to buy some more cars now that you have some room

No use for cars that won't get driven. Not enough room anyway. I need to make the garage two stories with parking for four up top and parking for two plus workspace on the ground level.
Then I'll just start building my own cars to fill it up.

Instead of more trusses in the garage, you could consider running a steel I-beam down the center (front-to-back) with a steel post on each end flange mounted to the concrete. That way you are not asking the walls to carry the load.