Lights! Ducts!

Saturday it was my birthday and Paul Simon's too. I spent the better part of the morning honoring our birthdays with an 8-album music marathon of Paul Simon tunes while Justin and Jason, a sheet metal journeyman that Justin knows, rearranged the ductwork in the basement. We now have all of the necessary ductwork to heat the basement and some of the ducts for the upstairs reorganized for optimal ceiling heights.  Being my birthday, the guys wrapped it up in the early afternoon so Justin and I could get on with our celebrating.

 Justin, a sheet metal apprentice for the day, patching the old duct for reuse.

Jason is fitting our new East/West trunk of duct with a branch for the bathroom.

 

Here's my new design for the mantel. Justin gave me the urn on the right for my birthday. I plan to hang a large mirror above the mantel in lieu of that too-small artwork.

We amateur electricians have nearly completed the wiring for the basement lights and about 60% of the receptacles. This is my first time really working with wiring in a house. I've done little projects here and there but I've never wired up a lighting circuit until this basement project came along. Now I've got my 3-way switch badge and new breaker badge. The best news of all is that we now have a respectable number of lights in the basement to actually carry on down there without dragging around the clamp-on construction lights. Woohoo!