Taking care of some overdue house projects

This past week I've gotten the bug to work on some house projects that have been on our list for a long time. Now that the weather is warming up, the temperature in the attic isn't ice cold, and not yet blazing hot, which works well for me.

We've been doing our best to keep the upstairs bathroom ventilated as we started to see mold appearing on the wall behind the door many months ago. That was taken care of with some bleach and mold-resistant primer and paint. Now I have a new bathroom ventilation fan installed in the ceiling. I picked up a nice little 70 CFM fan from Menards. After locating the right position up in the attic, I hooked up the wiring and ducting, and mounted the unit in place, and fished the wiring down through the wall to the switch box in the bathroom. As of now, I have a working bathroom fan. The only step I have left is to vent the air out through the roof. Installing the vent is a project for another day though.

Since I was already working in the wall outside our bathroom, I took the opportunity to install a second light switch in our hallway. Previously, we had to walk all the way down a dark hallway to reach the light switch. With some careful measuring I was able to fish my wires down into the walls without making any extra holes in the wall, which was very nice. It took some time to sort out the plan for wiring, but I was able to make it work nicely. Now I have two switches on our hallway light. A small convenience, but well worth the effort.

Quick & Easy Foot Switch

So this all started with a floor lamp we bought from IKEA, with a handy foot switch built into the cord. The convenience of just stepping on a foot switch to turn on a lamp is really quite nice, and I've found more opportunities to do this elsewhere in the house.

During one of my many trips to Home Depot, I stumbled on the exact same foot switch I had seen on the IKEA lamp, in the lighting section, hidden in with the lamp parts. For just under $6.00 I had the foot switch, and for another $1.00 I had an extension cord to wire it into. Simply cut one strand of the two-wire extension cord and strip the ends back about half an inch. After twisting the ends, the exposed wire inserts into the switch. Once this is complete, press the wires into place and re-assemble the switch.

This worked particularly well for my office. I have a couple lamps on my desk, and turning them both on would be a bit difficult the way the switches hang off the back of the desk. So, I plugged both lamps into the end of the modified extension cord, and I can turn them both on and off by stepping on the foot switch under my desk.

So... not the most difficult house project, but a very nice convenience.