Almost two years ago, I installed the first 21st-century electrical outlet in our 112-year-old house. I wanted two separate branches so we could run two high-load appliances at once, but I didn’t have any 240v cable and the conduit I had installed couldn’t hold two cables. We settled for a single 20-amp circuit and just had to remember not to run the oven and microwave at the same time.
It also attaches to an outdoor outlet on the deck.
Eventually we got the rest of the house wired, and I fully intended to go back and replace those two outlets with separate branch circuits. There are four other branches in the kitchen, so we can run all our induction burners and the espresso machine and the blender — but we can’t microwave if we’re baking or toasting.
When a man says he is going to do something, he will do it.
There is no need to remind him every six months.
Now that we’re approaching the two-year mark, L and I decided to bite the bullet. He can do the under-the-house stuff that stresses my old bones. I can supervise teach. It took less than two hours, and we would have been able to repurpose the old 120v circuit to a plug in my office, but I didn’t have a drill bit long enough to reach from the molding to under the house.
Now, at long last, if we forget that something is in the oven and start the microwave, we won’t have to take a trip out to the breaker box.
—2p