an electrical weekend

it was a busy social weekend for us! saturday we were in palo alto for our friends’ son’s birthday party, stopped by to wish my brother a quick happy birthday and had dinner with an old high school friend and his son. on valentines day we had dinner with my grandmother, aunt and uncle to celebrate chinese new year at a local italian restaurant.

this last weekend we worked on electrical projects in the garage. it was time consuming and wasn’t all a priority but it greatly improves the safety of our home.

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wires, wires everywhere!

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an assortment of electrical goodies (nightmares) found in our garage. yikes! i’m no electrical expert, but this just looks wrong.

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(left) my favorite tool this weekend, it strips the plastic coating from electrical wire, leaving the copper exposed and unharmed. (right) yep, mathew had me working on electric projects this weekend. on sunday i was helping mathew while he worked, on monday he put me to work on my own projects!

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the 3-way light switch i wired myself! (please excuse the need for touch-up paint…)

while i worked yesterday, with every new project i had to ask, “is this live? is it turned off?” because i’ve had some scary electrical accidents in the past, i just needed to be totally sure i wasn’t going to be electrocuted! it never hurts to be safe.

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at times it was complete wiring chaos…

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here are a couple of the completed projects. not much to look at, but very much improved!

hope everyone had a nice valentines/chinese new year weekend!