Grounded outlets, now available in the living room!
With the trim painted, the old brown outlets stood out. They were also two prong un-grounded outlets with old cloth wiring into the wall. Like a lot of other wiring in the house, the wiring from the panel box was updated but the branch circuits were mostly left in place.
I was surprised to find that the cloth-covered wiring did have a ground wire in it. Those are the black cables in the picture, and the ground wire is tied to the junction box. That box was probably grounded in the same way when it was originally wired. Unfortunately, the “updated” wiring from the panel box didn’t do that. They just left the ground wire loose.
That’s now been updated, so we have our first new circuits! Right in the reading corner of the living room too, so it’ll make a nice place to plug in the electric blanket next time it gets down to zero degrees.
Let’s hope that’s not for a while – we just opened up a new hole in the kitchen wall to check on a beam…