Before you move in
Electrical work for the older Ann Arbor house you just bought
Your new dream home will be a dream to move into. Panel upgrades, GFCI installation, knob and tube replacement, and the new circuits an older house was never built with, from a licensed Ann Arbor electrical contractor.
Chapter 01
Buying an older Ann Arbor house comes with its own checklist
Ann Arbor has plenty of houses built well before modern wiring standards existed, and the electrical inside them tells that story in ways a walkthrough will not catch. A panel that has not been touched in decades, outlets that are still two-prong throughout the house, and wiring hidden in the attic or basement that predates anything sold today are all normal finds in a house that otherwise looks move-in ready. Vedder Electric puts it plainly: your new dream home will be a dream to move into, once the electrical behind the walls actually matches the house in front of you.
That is the exact situation Meghan PGX Photography called about: "I had Matt as my electrician yesterday. I have an older house so was a bit concerned whether my issues could be resolved. I was super impressed with his knowledge and efficiency. He got all my issues fully resolved. I would definitely recommend him and the company to my friends and family!"
A framed interior wall with new electrical cable stapled to the studs and boxes roughed in
Panel upgrade and GFCI installation are the baseline, not the finish line
A panel upgrade is normally the first real step on an older house, because everything downstream of it, every circuit and every outlet, depends on a panel with room for what a modern household actually runs. GFCI installation is not far behind: older houses built before GFCI protection was standard often have none in the kitchen, bathrooms, or anywhere near water, and adding it is one of the more affordable ways to bring an older house's real world safety closer to a house built today.
Neither job on its own turns an older house into a new one, and Vedder does not pitch it that way. A panel upgrade and GFCI installation are the baseline most older Ann Arbor houses need, done first because most of the other work on this list either depends on the panel having capacity or benefits from GFCI protection already being in place.
Chapter 03
Knob and tube replacement
Knob and tube wiring shows up often enough in Ann Arbor's older housing stock that it has its own line item. It was a reasonable design for the load a house drew when it was installed, and it becomes a real liability once insulation gets packed around it or a homeowner tries to tie modern circuits into it. Replacing it means running new circuits where the knob and tube used to be, not patching around it.
This is usually the most involved work in an older house, since knob and tube tends to run through walls, attics and floor cavities that were never meant to be opened again. Vedder works through it room by room rather than promising a single afternoon fix, and the new circuits that replace it are grounded as they go in.
New circuits, wall mounted TVs, recessed and security lighting
Most of the rest of an older home job is new circuits built for things the original electrician never planned for: laundry and dryer circuits that draw more than the house's original wiring allows, an outlet cut into the wall behind where a television is going to hang instead of a cord running across the floor, and recessed lighting swapped in for whatever fixture was there when the house was built.
Security lighting is its own new circuit too, usually run to a spot the house never had power at all: over a garage door, along a driveway, or at a back entrance. Fixture replacement covers everything else, from a dated ceiling fixture to a bathroom vanity light that has outlived the remodel around it. All of it ties into the same panel and circuits addressed earlier in the job, rather than being treated as an unrelated add-on.
Vedder Electric is a Michigan Electrical Contractor, License #6106506, and has worked on older Ann Arbor houses for over 35 years. Call the office at 734-662-6220, Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM, to talk through what your house needs.