I’ve considered strapping an power strip under my ironing board, but kind of forgot about it. Maybe I should move that to the top of my list!
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The grounding issue is in question. Our inspector had questions about some of our living room outlets, but an electrician (who I’ve known for some years now) said they were ok, so I put it out of my mind. Later as we were getting the house painted, we discovered a ground wire coming from the crawl space by the area in question. It is attached to a rod in the soil. Our house was built in 1927, so updates made at different times with different building codes. I would just like to have all the wiring redone with a new breaker box, upgraded outlets, additional ones, etc. And a 220 in the garage. We might not get an electric vehicle before we eventually move, but our buyer might want one. I know that’s an expensive project, but it will also reduce our homeowners insurance.
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Ah. I misunderstood what you meant by “the wiring is fine.” A friend of mine had mostly 2-prong outlets in her 1950s house, but the wiring did have 3 wires, so she was able to to update the outlets - she had an electrician do it.
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Looking back at our inspection report, it states that some of the outlets are improperly wired with a cheater wire from ground to neutral. I showed that to our electrician (a master electrician) who is from this area and knows old house wiring. He looked in the outlets and said they were fine, that the inspector was confused. The discovery though of the external ground wire going to a rod, has me rethinking it all.
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I had no idea either until I saw this one. My old roommate was complaining about having to move that stupid big old ironing board and all the time I was thinking “please leave it, please leave it!”.
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That is literally how “grounding” works, tho, isn’t it? It’s just that modern wiring packages everything into the same cord so you don’t have to run and shield extra wires.
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Awesome! Very cool door!
They’re drywalling today, so I’m hoping to share some pictures this evening.
We ordered cabinets for the bar, and picked out the faux stone. And I found a carpet warehouse that will turn any carpet into a custom area rug. DH wanted something reminiscent of a casino floor for the slot machine to sit on. 
Bonus points if it’s blacklight sensitive.
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They got most of the drywall hung today! Some of the support beams need to be boxed in, but that’s it. What a difference a day makes! It’s easier for me to visualize the size of the space now that I can’t see through the walls.
Here’s the stairwell:
And the library and crafting areas:
The bar and entertainment section (the ceiling is going to stay open and be painted):
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Oh man, you’re making me want to finish our basement real bad. This looks fabulous! And a library/craft room?! 
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Thank you! It was a project long overdue and my whole family is super excited to be able to use the space.
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A library craft room with a fireplace!
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Such progress! No one is ever going to leave the space when it gets done!
Nice egress window as well for light and safety…love seeing the progress as I am sure you do as well!
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Electrical is way out of my skill set, so I have no idea.
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I’m okay with this. 
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When the drywall goes up it really starts looking like a room! It’s very clever to have left the ceiling over the bar area different - it already differentiates that area as “separate” which is hard to do in larger, open spaces.
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That was half of our reason for doing it. The other half is height. When our house was built, they built the basement one block short. We’re all on the shorter side of average, but we have close family members (who will be invited to parties) who are going to have to duck under support beams.
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We are still making progress and actually ahead of schedule… but sometimes builders drive me crazy. And we chose one on purpose who is above average communicative and young enough to be into modern methods of communication (younger than us).
All the pipes are now poured into concrete and he poured the sewage pipe into concrete the other day (I hope that’s the right word, the pipe that connects my toilet to the city sewage system) but he put it in the wrong place 
It’s not a massive difference, it can be solved, we can just slightly change the plan and it won’t cost extra. But I am annoyed that instead of saying “sorry, I messed up, I didn’t check the plan, I thought I knew where it had to go” he’s claiming that he asked me over the phone where to put it and I told him it should go here. On the phone we discussed that the extension could be made about a foot bigger due to some unforseen circumstances, but we never discussed “move the bathroom”. I don’t remember discussing that at all but if we did I’m sure I told him to check the plan, because we drew that for a reason and sent it to him in November. He said back then he had all the plans he needed but now he said it wasn’t clear (it did clearly show where to put this toilet, but if it wasn’t he should have said so, and I’d have asked for more detailed plans).
Well, we’ll still have a bathroom and we don’t need to order extra materials, but inside everything has just moved 90 degrees compared to what we had decided on and we had to extend the size of the room slightly to make sure everything fits.
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That is really annoying!
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