A Project Long Finished

We may have told you that our house was built by someone who does not build houses for a living. He was (and perhaps still is, I don't know) a hobby-house builder. The fact that he built this home just for the fun of it means two things for us. First, there are cool unique touches, like the fact that all the wood in the house was harvested from pine growing across the road--it's all local lumber, including the trim. Second, there are not-so-cool unique touches, like closets that are too small.

Most houses have an electrical service panel, a.k.a. the breaker box. Most homebuilders place this panel in a location that is easily accessible, in case of emergency or need for repair. Not in our house. Not only was the breaker box tucked into a corner, our weekend-warrior homebuilder had built a closet around it. Either he mismeasured or he dispensed with the tape measure entirely, because the finished project was a closet in which you could open the door to the panel, but not take the panel cover off.

I'm pretty sure that's against code.

I'm not as sure that code enforcement got a look at this house before it was finished.

I didn't take a "before" picture, but here's what the corner of the room looked like after I had removed the closet door and facing drywall. Note the panel cover that I've slid down to the floor, because I can't get it out of the closet yet:

(Note also the steel frame studs. When he ran out of local lumber, our intrepid builder scavenged some metal studs to finish things off. Our walls are a mosaic of cinderblock, rough-cut studs, and steel. You never know what's going to happen when you try to hang a picture.)

Once I had the panel opening free and clear, I could insulate around the box (which has a direct hole to the outside, of course) and piece some drywall around it, using scraps from a past project.

(By the way, be careful when putting insulation in around a live, open breaker box. Especially when you're standing on a metal ladder. 220 current ain't something you want to tangle with. I won't tell you how I know. I don't want my insurance to be able to access that information.)

A little joint compound--all right, it was a lot, because I was doing a hack job with scraps. I even used recycled paper from the bin instead of the rolled-up strip you're supposed to use:

Scavenge some wood from past demolitions for the trim, slap some white paint on that puppy (left over from the nursery project) . . .

Et voila! 

You can't tell it wasn't built this way, unless you approach within five feet. But who checks out people's breaker boxes, anyway? And once we pile a ton of junk in front of it, no one will be able to go near it, even if they wanted to. When it comes time to refinish this room as the dining room, then I'll worry about how good it looks to the inspecting eye.

Right now, all I have to be able to do is reach the breakers in an emergency. Everything else is icing on the cake.

~ emrys