The good news: They found the old fuse box yesterday. The bad news: It's not a fuse box anymore. I seems the previous owners of our co-op apartment in Queens had some work done to the panel when they did their on-the-cheap renovation five or six years ago, and their electrician did something utterly stupid, illegal, and not up to code. He turned that old fuse box into a junction box — and then he buried it behind plaster and paint in the wall.
Unbelievable.
When I said something’s gotta give yesterday, I didn’t think that something would be my Thermador wall oven stack. This has been a very sad day for my kitchen plan.
Aleks scheduled a meeting in the morning with the co-op’s electrician Harry and I waited around to listen in. Harry had expected to see an old fuse box, for which he had a solution to offer my electrician that had worked for several of my neighbors who had renovated—a custom breaker box. Unfortunately, this wasn’t going to work for our hairbrained situation. Watch this, he said. He flipped off all the breakers in the breaker box, then tapped a voltage detector pen against the rigged junction box. It lit up like a Christmas tree. We had hot wires hidden behind the wall. The implications were astounding. I could have been doing some “easy” DIY like rewiring a ceiling fixture thinking the box wasn’t hot and been electrocuted.
On the one hand, good thing that we're uncovering this now. On the other hand, it really truly sucks for my renovation plan.
To add to that, I got an email back from Scherr’s that the doors might be a week late. I wrote back and asked if we could at least have the panels so the guys can get started fitting the appliances, but he said that’s not how it works. They’re all done in one batch. If I’d wanted the panels sooner I should have indicated.
Argh. I am beyond frustrated.
Follow the Renovation Diary:
When I said something’s gotta give yesterday, I didn’t think that something would be my Thermador wall oven stack. This has been a very sad day for my kitchen plan.
Aleks scheduled a meeting in the morning with the co-op’s electrician Harry and I waited around to listen in. Harry had expected to see an old fuse box, for which he had a solution to offer my electrician that had worked for several of my neighbors who had renovated—a custom breaker box. Unfortunately, this wasn’t going to work for our hairbrained situation. Watch this, he said. He flipped off all the breakers in the breaker box, then tapped a voltage detector pen against the rigged junction box. It lit up like a Christmas tree. We had hot wires hidden behind the wall. The implications were astounding. I could have been doing some “easy” DIY like rewiring a ceiling fixture thinking the box wasn’t hot and been electrocuted.
On the one hand, good thing that we're uncovering this now. On the other hand, it really truly sucks for my renovation plan.
To add to that, I got an email back from Scherr’s that the doors might be a week late. I wrote back and asked if we could at least have the panels so the guys can get started fitting the appliances, but he said that’s not how it works. They’re all done in one batch. If I’d wanted the panels sooner I should have indicated.
Argh. I am beyond frustrated.
Follow the Renovation Diary:
No comments:
Post a Comment