The Garage That Wouldn't
So a quick update on our garage. So it turned out that the breaker had gone bad and knocked out power to our entire basement. A quick trip to Lowe's gave us the new piece we needed, and then all we needed to do was swap it out.
We've actually had to replace a breaker before, so we weren't too worried about doing it again. Switch off the main power to the house, remove the front of the electrical panel, and then swap out the pieces. (Also enlist the help of an assistant to hold a flashlight!).
We're still not sure why this happened, so we'll keep an eye on it. Maybe it was a one time thing, but it if happens again our electrician will be paying us a visit.
More importantly, this gave us the kick we needed to get our keys copied and make sure we had them in various locations that could easily be recovered if I get locked out again! Lesson learned.
UPDATE: You knew that was too easy right?
Yeah, we figured it was too. So when I was on the T three days later and noticed our Nests were offline again, I quickly texted Tom and had him call the electrician. By the time I was home and confirmed the breaker had gone bad again, we already had the electrician scheduled to come out and take a look.
Turns out he'd wired something incorrectly, and kind of forgot he did it? The conversation with him went something like this:
Us: "Hey, power's out in our garage and basement, we think it's related to the work you did. Can you come by and check?"
Him: "Oh it wouldn't affect your garage doors, the wiring I did was on a separate breaker than the garage."
Us: "Nope, pretty sure it's on the same breaker.. when it went bad, everything went off. We're looking at the panel right now."
Him: "Oh. Um yeah that's not right. Um I'll be by tomorrow."
So not sure what happened there or why, but he did come by the next day and fix everything and wire it the way he should have originally. Hopefully that will be the end of coming home to a non working garage!