When last we spoke, I was finishing up the trim and getting ready to finish the last wall. But before I could paint that last wall, I wanted to get some outlets on it. That's right, in our den on the wall with the television and stereo components there was no outlet. We've lived with a rigged system of extension cords for four years and since my father was coming to help with the floor and he is expert at electrical wiring, we decided to put in three outlets in the room and in the garage, since they share a wall.
First, we had to get power from a junction box or the electrical panel into the wall. So we went into the garage and took down the drywall to expose the studs:
That little yellow wire you see was threaded up from my basement shop, through a hole we cut in the wall, and then I drilled through the studs to run it down to the bottom of the wall. But while I was drilling the studs, I made a remarkable discovery. See if you can see it in this picture:
Can't see it? Look a little bit closer:
Ah, there it is. While drilling, I almost drilled right into an outlet. That's right, at sometime in the past of my house, there was an outlet (complete with attached face plate, as you can see) that was paneled over in the den. Power was coming down to it from the lights, it was still hot and completely usable. Here's my dad point to where it was behind the paneling:
Who knows why it was paneled over or how long it has been like that (though I suspect it has been there the entire life of the house. Since we had run the wires and the new outlets were grounded where the old were not, we decided to just use the box and put in our new wires. But after wanting outlets for four years, discovering one was there all along was a bit frustrating. No matter though, after a day and a half of work, we had three outlets on the wall and I was able to finish the painting in the room. Now the wall has this lovely feature:
Alright, enough of electricity. Tomorrow, the new floor!
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