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!

Milestones

Yesterday was our deadline, but we beat it by a mile. The goal all along was to move into the house and host Justin's 29th birthday in the new place. We had an awesome party on Saturday night. Like proud parents, we were able to put our project out on display and welcomed the admiration and compliments. Justin had a keg of beer and a favorite meal and a bunch of friends over to help him celebrate the last of his 20s. I made the cake, a tried and true recipe for a delicious chocolate on chocolate confection. And everyone sang Happy Birthday.

Sunday was a delight...we took the day off and not just to nurse hangovers from the birthday party. We decided to check out the bike routes and took the inagural bike ride of the year, a whopping 9 miles which just about killed me since I'm so out of shape and there was a nice big hill to climb to get home. We read the paper and just relaxed, away from the tile and caulk and paint and home improvement projects that have claimed our weekends for so many months.