We have just a brief photo update regarding the remodel this week—there are only so many pictures you can take of wires, after all—but nevertheless, there are still a few highlights.

Just to get it out of the way up front, work continued on wiring in week 23 of the project. At this point, most of the actual electrical wiring seems to be done, and the team has mostly moved on to low voltage work. The speaker wire is in place in the living room, and they’ve begun installing the boxes and smurf tube for the network wiring. The smurf tube—so named because it used to be blue, like a Smurf—is a flexible, non-conductive conduit that will theoretically allow us to replace the wiring should it become damaged or outdated. The wiring we’re having installed is Cat 6a, so it shouldn’t be obsolete for a while, but it will be nice to have the option to upgrade it sometime down the road.

Believe it or not, a few things happened that aren’t related to wiring. Two of the big ones are framing for the pocket doors going into the laundry room and the installation (finally) of the picture window in the upstairs hallway.

The window feels even bigger now that it’s been installed than it did when it was just a hole in the wall. It faces west towards the street, so it will bring in a lot of sun (and heat) in the afternoons, and after dark, it will provide a beautiful view into the hallway, including the boys’ bathroom. As such, we’re definitely going to be in the market for some remote-controlled shades to provide a modicum of privacy for our not-especially-bashful-about nudity sons. The good news is that the window is out of reach from the stairwell, giving it a bit of protection from grubby fingers, so with luck, we won’t have to wash it too often.

With the installation of this window, all the windows are installed except for the one over the kitchen sink. We’re not entirely sure why that one is missing in action, but we’re hoping to find out soon.

In other news, we’re continuing to work through the cabinet designs, and we have a reasonably solid idea of what we’re looking for everywhere except in Julia’s bathroom. None of the cabinets have actually been built yet, so we don’t have any photos, but I thought I’d share some of the designs here.

In the kitchen, we’re going with custom cabinets, hoping to make the best use of the available area, as counter and storage space are always at a premium.

We expect the laundry room to do a lot of work in the new house, taking over three different functions from the old garage:

• Space for the washer/dryer, along with storage for laundry and cleaning supplies.
• A launch pad with cubbies and hooks for shoes, coats, and school supplies.
• Pantry storage, though it’s unlikely it will fully replace the comically deep pantry shelves we had before.

We’ve come up with a layout that we think will serve these needs reasonably well using stock cabinets, as long as we can find room in the garage for additional pantry storage (our spotty history with mouse infestations notwithstanding).

Finally, the layout is the boys’ bathroom is aggressively simple in its approach. We gave some thought to having cabinet towers on one or both sides of the counter, but ultimately decided against that approach in order to preserve as much flexibility as possible with respect to how we can use the space: we’re still trying to nail down where we’re going to put towel racks, for example.

Gallery: Week 23: Windows and Doors (And Also Wiring)