A Shocking Perspective

A red letter day occurred last weekend in the history of the Miller House.

That’s the name of our house, incidentally. Built by Grady and Anna Miller in 1930, it was the 3rd largest building project in Hickory during that first year of the Great Depression.

It was bid before the crash of 1929, so the blueprints (which we have) show some things much more ornate than they are in real life. Financial reality meant that Mrs. Miller – who ran the second shift as foreman at their factory – acted as her own General Contractor.

She was, by all accounts, a tough old bird.

Looking to economize wherever possible, though, she cut a lot of things to the bone in the house.

Light fixtures when we moved here in August, 1999, were for the most part a single bare bulb in each room.

The notes to the subcontractors that Mrs. Miller left made it clear that she was not paying for any fluff. She would paint the house herself. Windows and doors were standardized so they could be bought in bulk.

More than one electrical outlet per room was simply wasteful.

A decision that, in retrospect, I wish she’d re-thought.

One of the things that has plagued us the most is that the old knob and tube wiring – ceramic pieces in the wall that hold cloth-wrapped wire – is still in place and functioning through most of the house. If we open a wall and get a chance, it gets replaced, but we’ve stayed pretty true to the origins of the house, the kitchen being the main exception.

There was one -- yes, ONE -- electrical outlet in the entire kitchen.

Remember how Lisa Douglas on Green Acres had to number her appliances with point values and then if she exceeded that the circuit blew? We had that originally. You could run the Coffee Pot and the Microwave, but not the Toaster and the Coffee Pot. Given that the breaker box was in the basement, it sometimes made cooking breakfast a real pain.

So our most recent project is to separate.

Our offices, that is. For the past few years, we’ve shared an office upstairs. He wanted space to himself, though, so he could spread out things and be a bit more comfortable as he returns to graduate school.

I kind of like the idea, too, especially since getting rid of superfluous furniture is in line with our 5-year plan to be ready to downsize someday.

As a result, the dining room table – all 14 feet, 3 pedestals and 8 chairs worth – and the 7 ½ foot long China Hutch that weighs at least a metric ton went off to a consignment store last week and I’ve got great new space downstairs in what was originally the den turned dining room.

We’ll eat in the kitchen or in front of the television in the future.

That new office, though, came at a price. Namely, it had to have wiring for computers, telephones and enough electricity to power the Starship Enterprise into the 25th Century.

I'm done with lots of projects at this point in my life, major plumbing and electrical revisions being top of the lists. It’s cheaper to hire someone than it is to pay for (a) blood pressure medicine or (b) emergency room visits, not to mention the emotional wear and tear that goes with them.

So we hired a nice crew of electrician types to make it happen.

Overall they did a good job, but as with every construction project it exceeded both time and budget – mostly because of my tendency to utter the phrase, “. . . .as long as we’re here . . ..” followed by a change order of some type.

In the end, there were a couple of things I still wanted to do and my urge to putter took over. Besides, I don’t need no stinkin’ ‘lectrician to replace a couple of light switches.

You don’t even have to turn off the breakers if you’re careful.

So we hit a milestone. The last (known) original ceramic and Bakelite switches was replaced with a new, modern dimmer switch.

The old one went into the trash. And before the angry emails and comments start from the historic preservation purists – get over it! They’re old technology. There’s nothing romantic about a light switch that sparks when you flip it. There’s lots of more modern options that are both safer and more efficient.

I threw it away and am glad I did it.

Now, there’s a nice white switch that glows a soft orange to tell you where it’s at in the dark.

And I only had to put it in and out three times before I got it right.