10,000 Mechanicals

This is our second house renovation. On our first home, we couldn't wait to do the "cute" stuff first--you know, the yard, the floors, painting and the like. Then we would later discover that we had some "mechanical" (and also electrical and plumbing) issues that needed to be resolved--only to tear up the "cute" work that we had done previously.

We have learned our lesson...On this house, we have lived without paint, without new furniture, without walls, for god's sake, while we concentrated on making sure all of the mechanicals were done before we we did the fun stuff.

We have installed new heaters upstairs and down. We ran new gas lines (and oversized them considerably), new electrical, we ran new plumbing, and insulation. We installed "smurf" tubing all over the place so we could easily run T.V., phone, computer, and speaker wire where ever we wanted. We ran "chases" (the 2" grey conduit) so we could run structured media wires from the crawl space to the attic (where the Structured Media Center is located).

Although much of this is "overkill" and some will not be used for quite some time (some, perhaps, not at all), it is much easier and cheaper to do it now....And, hopefully, will keep us from tearing up some of the "cute" stuff that is sooooooo soon to come.



It is hard to resist the temptation to get the fun stuff now...and it is also hard to pour money into stuff you won't even see when the walls are done, but in the long run, I think it will be worth it.