May 18, 2021 by Maggie McNeill
I could see that my electrician was having a hard time with the mess of a breaker panel I inherited from the previous owner; Grace had done her best to rectify it, but she had told me several years ago that one day she wanted to pull the damned thing out, get a new panel, and just rewire the whole thing. So I asked the electrician if it would be easier for him to do just that, rather than struggling with mystery wires and cables to not-even-the-gremlins-know-where. He thought it over for a few minutes and then said yes, so I had him do just that. It meant doing without power for all of Sunday afternoon, but now we've got a proper, neat panel, wired by someone who actually knows what he's doing (which the previous owners absolutely did not) and with all the breakers labeled. As soon as the gas company can get someone out here with the new tank, we'll be able to finally enable the backup generator; then the next time we get an outage, we shouldn't have to do anything more complicated than resetting the clocks after outside power returns.