What a Day!

So, I know you are asking.....just how did I spend my 53rd birthday.  No, I didn’t spend the day in my easy chair reading a good book.  Nor did I eat b-day cake, chocolates, or smell the roses.  I and my darling husband took on yet another project in our fiver.  We spent the first part of the day in demolition phase....scary stuff.....especially when you just don’t know what you might find lurking within those ‘hollow’ walls.  You see, our inverter control panel stopped responding.  The inverter was fine....it was either the panel itself or the wiring that was bad.  The wiring consist of nothing more than a standard  phone cord.....the kind you plug into the wall and then into the phone.  Bill first removed and unplugged the inverter control panel, took it down to the basement, and using a new phone cord plugged it into the inverter.  Good news....everything lit up just as it is supposed too!  Now we know.....bad wiring is the culprit.  Running a new wire seemed simple enough.  Billy used his “fish tape”....for you novices out there in handyman land, fish tape is nothing more than a roll of thin, flat tin.  He attached one end of the bad phone cord to the fish tape and began slowly pulling the other end.  With any luck the old phone cord comes through to the other side with the fish tape still attached....then you simply reverse the process.  Attach the new cord to the fish tape and pull it through.  No such luck for us.....he did manage to get the new cord through, but it was damaged in the process.  When he tried to pull the now damaged cord out....it snapped.  We both sat there, scratching our heads, and finally decided we would have to remove the entire wood panel to expose the wiring and put in the new cord. Once we removed all the trim pieces we discovered that part of the wood panel extended back behind the refrigerator.  How stupid is that.....no easy access to a ton of wires.  Wires that feed not only our inverter, but our slides, tank monitors, lighting.....a whole host of things.  We decided we would take a box cutter and cut the panel close to the corner where it meets the frig.  SUCCESS! 

 We now had all the wiring exposed.  What a mess!  Plus a whole bunch of exposed screw points....from the stuff that was attached to the front of the wood panel.  Looked like an accident waiting to happen to us.  More bad news.....the wires all take a sharp left turn, then disappear behind the side of the frig before reappearing under the frig and out to the basement.  To make a long, long story somewhat shorter. 

This photo shows the new hole....the one with the white cord hanging out of it

 

Billy drilled a new hole through the floor down to the basement.  Of course, this was no easy task.  He didn’t have a long enough drill bit so he had to drill from top side and then from bottom side.....hoping the two would meet somewhere in the middle.  Meanwhile, our shower is just behind this panel we are drilling through......so I am envisioning the drill bit rearing it’s ugly head through the floor or side wall of our shower at any moment.....did I tell you this was my birthday?  Well, all is well that end’s well!  We got the hole drilled, ran the new cord, re-bundled some wires, took care of those nasty screw points, and put everything back together.  Everything works and all that is left is replacing some trim work.  WHAT A DAY!  A long day, we didn’t eat supper till around 8pm that evening.  Since “murphy’s law” is alive and well in the Goode household, we spent the rest of the evening waiting for sparks to fly out from the panel and to be left in total darkness!  Fortunately, Murphy took a day off and we still have power!