It's Electric! Boogie woogie woogie woogie...

The only thing that scared me about buying this house was the presence of old knob and tube wiring from the roaring twenties. When I got the inspection, everything went well, but the inspector suggested removing the remaining wiring, even though the house has a modern breaker box and mostly new wiring coming from it.

I called a "Tom Martino" electrician and had them look at the house. I won't discuss dollars here, but the estimate would have put a halt in all future remodeling plans. I was crushed. So I called for other estimates.

It turns out, the problem wasn't nearly as bad as the first electrician wanted us to believe. At the closing I found out that the previous owners had done some work to the electricity, but they used an electrical engineer friend. The wiring was probably not dangerous, but was not done like a electrician would do. Thus the outlets in the closets and the porch light switch in the spare bedroom. The smaller family company and a independent contractor both agreed that the wiring was almost completely updated and only a few safety problems should be addressed. I decided to go with the family owned company, because they said they could come and ground the important outlets, add some more outlets, put switches in logical places, and remove all the old wiring for the least amount of time and cost to me. Fantastic! Though I must say that I hate being at someone else's mercy.