Lights, Switches, Roof

Not exactly “lights, camera, action,” lacking only the camera, and I’ve provided that.

The last week-plus have felt like three steps forward, two sideways, one backward. Let’s start with one of the steps forward: the roof over the south patio. In one of my previous posts, I wrote about how we were working on figuring out just how the slats of the main part of this patio would be built, arranged and tilted. Well, Rick from Weatherguard came back late in the week before last with a new plan. When we put the template up against one of the sides that it will be mounted to, it was clear we’d found the right answer. Unfortunately, it’s not visible in the photos I took! D’oh! But it works! Really it does.

Then, this past week was supposed to be the big interior electrical week in which all of the light fixtures and switches were supposed to be installed and all of the outlets energized. “Supposed to be.” Yeah, you can see where this is going.

There IS good news. Many of the fixtures did get installed, like the one in the dining room…

…hanging a LONG way down from the ceiling. And the cable lighting system that goes in one of the halls leading to the master bedroom…

This is just one of the fixtures. There’s another one like it at the other end, plus three spotlights in between. We’ve left the hanging cable looped until we know how high or low the lamp should hang.

And there are ceiling fans. This one is in the “oriental” bedroom.

And this one is in the office.

Yes, those blades are curved as much as they seem to be! There are other lights and ceiling fans too, of course. And there are lots and lots of can lights in the ceilings in many of the rooms. All of the lights have either LED or compact fluorescent bulbs in them. I’d wanted to go all-LED but some of the fixtures didn’t have that option.

The carriage lights on the outside of the garage have been installed too. This is a close-up of one:

And here are all three.

These particular lights came in three sizes and we picked the middle one. That choice worked well. There’s a glass plate in that rectangle below the main body but it’s not really either a reflector or a diffuser, so it remains to be seen–literally–how much light they’ll actually provide to the driveway. But they look nice.

And then there were the switches and switch plates. Notice anything wrong with this one?

Three big holes, right? Yeah, and this is where we get into the steps sideways and backwards. Just about all of the switches themselves are half the width they’re supposed to be. The company makes full-width and half-width switches so two switches could be fit into a space that ordinarily would have had only room for one (or four in space for two, or six in space for three, etc.). Unfortunately, when our contact at the lighting store placed the order, she didn’t see the full-width switches in the catalog and only ordered the half-width ones. So now all of the wrong ones will have to be replaced. Guess who’s NOT paying for that mistake!

But wait, there’s more! SIGH. Not all of the light fixtures we ordered came in. And some, like that dramatic one in the dining room, are missing something. So now, not only do we have to wait for the rest of the order to come in and for the corrections to be made, the electricians won’t be able to get back into the house for another two weeks.

“Why?” you ask.

Because for the next two weeks, no one will be allowed in while Cannon does his painting magic on the floors, not only inside the house but also on both patios, the entry porch, and the entry walk. This should be really interesting. Stay tuned!

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