Lots more electrical work today. Oh, and I found out the reason for all the holes in the basement ceiling: Jack added some new circuits (too many things were on too few circuits previously), and to wire them, he had to get from the circuit box in the front closet to the kitchen. He did this by going through the basement ceiling—and to snake through all the duct work and other wiring in the soffits down there, he had to drill access holes. You can see in the photos below the orange cord in one of the ceiling holes; it emerges in the kitchen and passes through some holes in the framing. I believe it's going to the cooktop, and possibly the oven as well.
The yellow cord, which was added yesterday in a similar manner, goes to a couple new GFCI outlets (code requires that kitchen outlets be GFCI now; it didn't when the house was built). The receptacles will probably go on tomorrow. One went on today, on the short dining room wall—and at the same time, the drywall on that wall came off, presumably so a new light switch could be installed (it's the blue box in the photo of that wall). We'll now have switches at both entries to the kitchen, which makes sense, don't you think?
I know Jack was in the laundry room a lot today, presumably snaking wire; it's possible that the bit of copper pipe in the third-to-last photo is also his handiwork.
The other big news of the day is that the appliances arrived. Well, all except the trash compactor, which is apparently coming next week. They're currently piled up in the dining room, awaiting drywall, tile, and cabinets...and of course the completion of the electrical work. Jack said they should be done with that tomorrow, and that he hopes they'll start re-drywalling tomorrow afternoon. The tile guy is supposed to come tomorrow and verify that everything is good to go; my assumption was that the tile would go in on Thursday, but I didn't actually hear Jack say that, now that I think of it. He just said that the tile goes in once the drywall is done. He also said that the cabinets are coming tomorrow, but they, like the appliances, will have to cool their jets for a while. Theoretically we could store them in the garage, since I'm taking the car to my sister's tomorrow, but if they're not installed by Sunday, we couldn't get the car in the garage upon our return. Given that the tile won't be finished until Friday at the earliest, I'd say chances are slim that the cabinets will be installed before next week. I hope they fit in the dining or storage room, or we'll have to park at an odd angle in the alley out back.
