31 Days of the Kitchen: Day Two

On the second day, I could feel that familiar feeling on the second day of the commitment of any major project. I just didn’t really want to get back to working on the kitchen. I put it off until the end of the day, even though the kids were out of the house and I had the time beforehand.

My plan was to get the electrical wires in place from the circuit breaker, through plastic tubes which need to be attached to the basement ceiling, and up through the basement ceiling, into the new kitchen wall. I probably need four separate cables: one for the refrigerator, one for the oven, one for the range, and one for the hood.

Four separate cables requires a lot of work to implement. The cables need to be guarded by plastic tubes which sheathe them from possible damage. Those tubes need to be attached to the ceiling, which is concrete block. Therefore, I had to use a big drill and implant plastic anchors which are made for this job. I didn’t have enough plastic tubes and anchors to finish the job, I will have to buy more.

Feeding the cables themselves into the tubes is not so easy. Two cables can fit into one of the largest size tubes that are sold at my local hardware store, but getting them both in takes a lot of tugging and pushing. I successfully fed two cables all the way from the box in the basement, along a path of a few turns, and up into the kitchen wall.

More work had to be done to enlarge the hole between the basement and ground floor of the house, inside the kitchen wall. I had previously made a hole, but it was only big enough for one wire. I enlarged that with masonry tools, and it might fit four cables now.

Overall I didn’t accomplish that much today, but I’m working on the right part of the project. If I can get the cables set in the basement, fed up into the kitchen, and connected to outlets at the right points in the wall, I’ll be able to build cabinets around those outlets.