April 6, 2005 - I spent all last week doing the electrical rough-in - the inside electrical work is now complete.  I spent all day Saturday and Sunday with Shay, my wife's cousin's son (second cousin-in-law?), digging a ditch for the electrical service - 100 feet long at 18 inches deep ... what an ordeal!   On Monday evening I laid the power conduit and on Tuesday I laid the voice/data conduit and pulled the voice/data cables.

Update: The inspector just left - I got a nice pretty green tag for the framing, electrical rough-in and conduit, so now I'm ready to insulate, drywall and fill the trench.

The breaker box and stub-out for power, telephone and data.  All 120 volt receptacles will be 20 amp, with a maximum of three duplex receptacles per circuit,

The runner board - since the garage door headers are solid, the wiring had to be stapled to a runner board that extends the full width of the front:

Typical wall section ... note the 50 amp welder receptacle:

Light switches and garage door controls:

Power and wiring for the garage door openers:

The infamous trench - 100' of grief. Note the two large roots I had to dig under. In all, we had to dig around two big roots, three sprinkler lines, five telephone lines (only one of which was marked by the ever-vigilant Verizon), and several cable TV coax lines (which we just cut out - Verizon had already severed them all).

More trench and the stub-out to the existing house panel. Digging under the walk was fun - especially when I found the gutter drain line running right down the center of the walk (right in my direct path, of course).

April 13, 2005 - I spent the last two days hanging sheet rock.  I did most of it by myself, but I have to give special thanks to my helpers, Mary Lynn (my wife) who helped me heft the full sheets for the second row, and James Faxon who helped me on the last push, cutting the last goofy-shaped sheets while I hung them.  It's not the prettiest job, but taping and bedding and texturing hides all kind of sins! 

April 18, 2005 - Lots of progress last week, but not many progress photos. On Wednesday, I got the fluorescent lights hung and wired.  On Wednesday and Thursday, Jerry Claytor from Denton did the taping and bedding and on Friday he did the texturing.  On Friday, Daniel Electric from Southlake pulled the service cabling through the conduit and hooked it into house panel. On Sunday, I painted the walls and Mary Lynn and I painted the casing around the garage doors.  Today, Tru-Roll from Pilot Point installed the garage doors and openers.  Excellent jobs by all!

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