Week 21 of the remodel was a busy one, as not only did the construction team continue to make steady progress, we were faced with making some key decisions that will impact the course of the project over the next several weeks.

The week started with a rare on-site meeting with Enzo and Jamie, the electrician on our project, to walk through the house and review the electrical plans we put together with Lakshmi last spring. As I gather is typical for projects like ours, Enzo and Jamie had a number of suggestions about ways to simplify the lighting configuration based on how the house is taking shape. In our case, this was probably for the best, as we ended up needing to tear out the wiring in the living room and office a few weeks ago, and replacing it was not in the scope of the original bid. Cutting back on a few lights in other parts of the house frees them up for use in those rooms.

We also talked about our plans for low voltage wiring—networking, mostly—which wasn’t explicitly spelled out in the construction plans we sent to the city. There’s a fixed allowance for this stuff in the bid, but I strongly suspect we’ll be exceeding that amount, as our ambitions in this area might be a bit outside the norm. We’re looking at about seventeen network runs, covering all the living spaces in the house as well as the doors, where we’re planning to install security cameras. All of these runs will come back to the closet in the office, where they’ll terminate in a patch panel in a small, wall-mounted rack.

Work on the wiring in the walls was expected to take a couple weeks, so we should be about halfway through as of this weekend. Later, after the drywall has been installed, we’ll circle back and take care of actual switches, outlets, and network connectors during the trim phase of the project.

From the outside of the house, the most notable change this week was the installation of shingles and siding on the second floor gables, along with window trim. The color of the unpainted surfaces isn’t great—they’re a sickly greenish yellow—but when we’re finished, they’ll be painted to match the existing stucco. Joe has been very worried about whether the finished house will fit into the neighborhood for the last few weeks—there are some examples on our street of rebuilt homes that really stick out—but seeing some of the finishes in place has helped to reassure us that we’re not too far into the weeds.

The other concern we’ve been wrestling with this week is the selection of cabinets: Enzo let us know that he was going to need to know where we were headed shortly, so we’ve been working late into the night poring over different options in an effort to figure out what we’re going to do. Based on feedback from Lesley, the designer we’ve been working with, we’re leaning towards custom cabinets in the kitchen, where we’re trying to satisfy a broad range of different requirements. With that in mind, we’re hoping to save a bit of money in the laundry room and upstairs bathrooms by going with stock, off-the-shelf units.

The bathrooms should be pretty straightforward, as we’re not doing anything unusual there. The laundry room is a bit more complicated, as we’re looking to have storage under the sink and over the laundry machines, and we’re also looking to install a pantry and additional cabinets on the opposite wall, along with coat hooks and a launch pad for the kids’ backpacks and school supplies. We considered throwing together pieces from different sources to fill these needs: wall cabinets from Home Depot, a pantry from Ikea, and under-sink cabinets from somewhere else, but it quickly became clear that the room would look sloppy and unfinished with so many mis-matched parts. As a result, we’re looking for a single supplier who can provide all the pieces we need, hopefully giving us a more consistent, coherent look. We put together some sketches illustrating what we’re hoping for, and we’re counting on Enzo to come up with some good options.

Gallery: Week 21: Siding and Wiring