Romex

A roughed-in switch box with 15A Romex for our stairwell lights. Romex is a brand and common term for the hundreds or thousands of feet of copper electrical cable run through probably 99.99% of American homes and businesses. In other countries I think they call it a Royale with cheese.

Breaker Box

Statewide Electric is doing our electrical work. These guys move fast, and they've indicated that they haven't even hit their groove yet. This is the electrical panel in the basement. It doesn't have breakers in it yet, hence the sparse look.

Front Porch Excavation

The concrete guys will be back on Monday to pour the footings for the front and back porches (the deck footings are already done). They'll also be pouring concrete pads for all three stairways. You pour pads when you need something other than dirt on which to terminate the bottom of your stairs, unless you want your bottom steps to rot off. One of our early lessons in home ownership: earth-to-wood contact equals trouble.

We're not quite finished with the excavating. We need to run plumbing and electrical out to the garage, so we'll be trenching for that as early as next week.

Hogging

Dean, our plumber, was on site today ripping out old plumbing and making room for the new stuff. In this photo he's hogged out a hole for the bathroom sink drainpipe. Hogging is different than drilling. To hog is to tear out in chunks, usually leaving a rough finish. Drilling produces particles of dust and leaves a smoother finish. Hogging typically takes a lot less time than drilling, which makes it a useful process for a plumber.