“We’ve got to figure out how to get this old one out!”

“[T]his old one” is the old 120 power box that was on the outside of the west side of the house and had been dangling (see photo below) in the newly expanded kitchen and bathroom. An electrician from a subcontracted electric company was charged with removing the old power box and reconfiguring the new power source to the breaker box in the basement.

At the same time, workers from Indiana Michigan Power worked to connect the new, 240 power connections to the house. It’s a monstrosity, but they were finished in under 30 minutes!

Just an hour later, the subcontracting electric company had connected, or had “got[ten] out the old one” (mostly, see below), connected the new power source to the breaker box, cleaned up, and restored the power. In total, we were out of power for 90 minutes this morning. We were astonished at how little time it took. I asked the contractor how they could do this so quickly, and the leader said that our general contractor told them that because Dan and I both work from home, the power interruption needed to be completed as quickly as possible. We were appreciative that our general contractor–who didn’t tell us that they had asked for expedited service–was taking care not only of our construction project, but our personal and professional lives.

I mentioned earlier that the subcontractors had removed most of the formerly-exterior power box. While one of our primary workers was on another site for a while, I noticed that the now-powerless dangling meter was still a resident of our new kitchen:

In addition, an old cable TV cord stretched between the house and the utility pole on the south border of the house. When our main worker returned, I asked about both the dangling box and the dead cable wire, wondering why the new cable company hadn’t eliminated the needless, cross-yard cable, nor why the electrical subcontractor hadn’t removed the dangling power box. Happily for our general contractor (sarcasm), that work was left to the general contractor.

By the end of the afternoon, “J” had removed the old (dead) cable from the utility pole to the roof and the metal tube through the kitchen that housed old-tech cables, sealed the roof, and removed the dangling electrical box inside the kitchen. Now the patio is clear of wires: which is astonishingly open!

To extricate the old cable infrastructure, and seal the opening “J”– I’m not naming him for his privacy, although we adore him and his work–took off the tarp from the addition’s roof and thus the windows. It was hot, difficult work, so he opened the new kitchen windows. And because we have, finally, good weather in Indiana, he left the tarp off so at the end of the day, we can see how much light the new windows will give us!