Christmas

Christmas came and went without any major problems. As I scaled back my expectations for what I could accomplish in time for my family's arrival, my stress level decreased proportionally. I didn't finish plastering, never mind spackling, sanding, washing, priming, or painting, but I did get the important things done.

As I shuffled around on my hands and knees cleaning the floor with a spray bottle and a scraper, I was really hating myself for not putting drop cloth or at least newspaper down. When I was just scraping the wallpaper off dry, it wasn't really a big deal because I could just vacuum up the scraps. But when I started using the steamer, the scraps and their adhesive became wet and dried stuck to the floor. That really sucked, and at the very least, I'm putting a few copies of The Stranger down before I finish plastering.

I made a number of NEC violations in order to get all the outlets and light fixtures working in time. The hot wire for the porch light needed to be connected to the panel somehow, so I jury-rigged it into an already-full junction box. I left plenty of slack (but supported the connection into the J-box with a cable staple) so I could chop it down and hook it up for real after Christmas. It may have been a hack, but after I connected the hot wire for the porch light and went upstairs to turn it on, when the light came on, I felt as if I had invented electricity myself.

To save time, I decided to leave the outlets as knob & tube. Unfortunately, I already had new boxes in and the knob & tube cabling does not fit into the knockouts for the new boxes. So I connected some smaller wires to the K&T ones and ran those into the boxes. It'll be easy to fix that, but again, that's not passing inspection.

Miraculously, the dining room light fixture is wired up legitimately. My brother helped me re-hang the chandelier, and it looks really nice, if identical to its former ungrounded self.

I unwrapped all the furniture and got to lounge around on that for a little bit, which was pretty nice. I assembled my IKEA coffee table. I brought a Christmas tree home and set it up. I cleaned the kitchen. I saw the room, and saw that it was good.

Christmas was a lot of fun, but I'm exhausted. I put my sister and her husband in my bed and crashed on the couch and my back is still hurting from it. I decided to lay off work on the living and dining rooms for this week and just relax. I'm so used to working on the house nonstop that I got home last night and had no idea what to do with myself.

Oh, and I got a flippin' sweet router from my mom and brother for Christmas. Maybe I can use that to dress up the wood for my brick molding.

We'll see how my plan to take the rest of the week off works out. I already want to get back to work.

Rally Day 2

Well, I got the bulk of the wiring tasks done today. I didn't take any pictures because I was so busy, so this will be primarily a textual update.

I woke up sore as could be, but managed to drag myself out of bed into the shower and off to work. I added a little plaster to the large area under the window, snipped the wire and did the finish coat on the doorknob hole, and got to the wiring work.

Removing the little bench between the closets proved to be a formidable task producing a ton of debris. It was framed sturdily with 2x4, covered in drywall, and finished with wood paneling. I cut a hole in the wall between two studs for getting at the porch light. I drilled a hole in the basement ceiling for fishing hot wire up to the porch light switchbox. Mom came over again and finished up scraping the wall. Yesterday I realized I had bought three-way switches instead of normal two-way switches, so I ran to the hardware store and picked that up. I also picked up another 50 lb bag of plaster because I'm probably going to need it:

While Mom was around, I removed the switch box in the dining room, destroying some of the surrounding plaster. I seem to really do a lot of plaster damage on the switch boxes. I tried to fish Romex from the switch box to the second floor. Unfortunately, there was an existing knob & tube wire in the way, and the porcelain knobs are nailed to the studs, making the wire very hard to just pull out. I enlarged the hole around the switch box area enough to be able to pry out the knob and cut the lath in the way with my trusty sawzall. Unfortunately, the sawzall caused a lot of vibration in the lath and a bunch more plaster fell off. Anyway, I got the damn wire out of the way and got new wire fished from the switch box to the ceiling.

I removed all of the electrical boxes for the outlets in the living room. I cut a hole in the dining room ceiling for installation of an electrical box (there wasn't one). Josh came over and helped me fish some wire. We got the really hard ones done, namely, the switch legs. I already had the wire on the second floor, so we just needed to get it to the fixture. We drilled through five joists above the dining room in order to get it from point A to point B. This was a non-trivial operation: there are only three holes in the floor, so two joist cavities would have to be fished blind, meaning poke the fish tape through the side of the joist you can see, and poke around blindly hoping to get it through the next hole where you can see it again. Complicating this further was the fact that one of these had to be done at a slight angle. Also, the drill barely fit in the space between the floor and ceiling, so that was a big pain in the ass. This crude diagram explains it all:


Light fixture wire fishing diagram

Here I am drilling through a joist, courtesy of Josh's Sidekick camera.


Mr. Driller

Anyway, despite the complexity of fishing it, we had a pretty solid plan going before doing the work and we got it done in a reasonable amount of time.

On to the porch light, we fished the hot wire from the basement to the switch box and found that wrapping the connection between the wire and the fish tape in electrical tape means it doesn't get stuck when the sheathing catches against the hole. So that must be why every book on earth tells you to do it. I got out Señor Sawzall again and cut a hole in the awning for the electrical box.

Next we fished wire from the hole in the awning up and through the header above the switch. I had to crawl through the hole I had cut in the wall into the dirty, dusty, fiberglass-ridden space above the awning.


Into the breach


About as comfortable as it looks

This really, really, really sucked. I cramped up badly from laying across all the joists and having no room to move around; there was knob & tube wiring I had to crawl through (it was off at the breaker); I drilled a 3/4" hole in the wrong place, I think it was into one of the studs; I have a hard time breathing with the mask on; it was filthy; etc.

Anyway, we got it done in about the same amount of time it took to do the other one (60-90 minutes, maybe). It was getting late, so we knocked off and went to the Hilltop for some of that delicious Hale's Cream Ale.

I still have to do to the outlets, but those should not be too hard. All the plastering is what is really worrying me. I'm not sure how I'm going to get the remodel boxes mounted without any surrounding plaster, but I need them mounted in order to do the replastering.

I wouldn't have accomplished anywhere near the amount I did this weekend without the help of my mom and Josh, and I am still grossly behind. I cracked the LCD screen on my Sidekick when it was in my overall bib and I was crawling around on my belly. There is no way I am going to get all this stuff done in time for my family's arrival on Christmas Eve. I want to die.

Love,
Ficus

Rally Day 1

Today was very productive, thanks in no small part to my mom coming over to help out. She graciously offered to come over and do whatever work I could give her to do, and I obliged by giving her the remainder of the wall-scraping duty. Sorry, Mom.


My helpful mom

She is only smiling because it is not her umpteenth day scraping those damn walls.

Mike came over and we set about the big rewiring project. He was at the house for three and a half hours and we did not rewire a single circuit. But we did cut a lot of holes, trace a lot of wires, measure a lot of distances, and I have a step-by-step plan detailing everything I need to do to get down to it tomorrow. I had hoped we would do at least one circuit together so I could be walked through it, but he had already been at the house for so long and I feel like I have a solid understanding of what needs to be done now.



More holes in upstairs floor


Hole in upstairs wall

I have to cut a (bigger) hole in the upstairs wall large enough for me to fit my body through so that I can get at the porch awning and the header above the wall cavity containing the switch box. I have to remove a little bench between the two closets upstairs so that I can cut a hole in the floor underneath it. I have to drill through 4 joists to run wire from the dining room light switch to the box. I have to fish new hot wires to the two switches. I have to install two electrical boxes for the new fixtures (the old ones had no boxes). And I have to do three outlets, one of which actually seems to be receiving power from the wiring upstairs instead of coming from the basement. I have my work cut out for me tomorrow.

Mike left and I went to Paris, Texas to buy some electrical boxes and a hole saw to make room for them with. When I got home, I decided that since I knew that I wasn't going to have to knock any holes in the walls to do my rewiring, I could go ahead and continue with preparing the walls for painting, saving the electrical work for tomorrow. My mom finished the living room and I gave it a once-over with the hand sander to remove any little wallpaper boogers and to rough up the wall for better primer adhesion in the unlikely event I ever get to paint the room.

That done, I moved on to repairing the large damaged sections in the wall. I stapled hardware cloth over the large section of exposed lath underneath the window in the living room and mixed up some plaster.

I had a really hard time with the plaster, getting it everywhere, making too much and having it set too fast, but I seemed to be getting better with each successive try. I got a reasonable base coat on the wall, which I'm allowing to set overnight even though it is quite sturdy already.


Hardware cloth stapled to the lath


Base coat

While the plaster sat, I set about repairing the hole left by the doorknob. This one was a little more problematic because the lath behind it is broken and cannot support the hardware cloth. I tried a trick I read about online: tie a wire or string to the middle of the mesh, fold it up, put it in the wall through the hole, and pull on the string. The cloth comes flush against the back of the wall. Put your base coat on, and once it sets, just cut the wire and put a finish coat on.


About the size of a doorknob

They recommended tying the wire to something heavy across the room. I was lazy and stapled it to the wall and back. I'm going to be spackling the wall like crazy anyway.


Filled in, with retaining wire

I spackled two of the living room walls before calling it a day on housework.

Tomorrow I'm gonna get up, do a coat of plaster, then get everything done in preparation for fishing. Then I'll call Josh to come help me to do the actual fishing and maybe we will go get some ribs. But right now I am going to finish my drink and go the hell to sleep. I'm exhausted.


You'd want one too

25

I turned 25 today! Check out this bitchin' miter saw my mom got for me:


The ultimate set of tools

I am totally excited about this saw because it will allow me to cut the 45-degree angles I so desperately need for the basement door's exterior trim. Then I will be able to insulate the damn thing.

Katie got in on Saturday evening, so I really haven't got much done at all. The time on Saturday before her arrival was spent cleaning up the house in order to lend some fabricated air of civilization to the joint. I needed to mop the kitchen floor, so naturally, I bought a commercial janitorial Rubbermaid® Brute™ mop and bucket/wringer. It basically wrings the hell out of a mop, and cleaning the kitchen floor was a snap.


The Wringing Machine

I did do a couple of minor household tasks this weekend. I finally got around to installing the deadbolt in the basement door. It sure looks a lot nicer than the plastic grocery bag I had shoved in the hole for "insulation". I also put a few hooks in my kitchen shelves to hang my stand mixer attachments from. Little things like this are what is so awesome about owning a house. If you have an idea of a little something to install to make life easier, you can just go for it.


Little hooks

I went to IKEA today and bought a bunch of lamps and a couple miscellaneous pieces of furniture. My family is coming to spend Christmas here and I am flailing wildly trying to get everything in order for the visit. I'm going to be busting ass pretty hard this weekend to get it all in order. An electrician pal is going to come on either Saturday or Sunday to help me get the circuits I need to rewire done. Sometime before that, the walls need to be cleaned up. Sometime after that, they need to be painted. And sometime in the middle of all that, there's a bunch of debris that needs to be removed from the house. The weekend after that, I'm going to have a bunch of people in the house, so here's hoping it all gets worked out. Maybe all the pressure will get me to the finish line after all.


More lovin' from my oven

Demolition & Discovery

As usual, I intended to get a whole lot of certain things done this weekend, and as usual, I did get some things done, but as usual, the overlap of those two lists is pretty sketchy.

Things destroyed this weekend:

The basement ceiling. I cut a small hole in the basement ceiling to see where the wires to one of my offensive knob & tube outlets were going. Sure enough, I saw them come out of a joist and go up through the floor into the wall cavity. So I got out my sawzall and tore the rest of the ceiling down.


Ceiling on the floor


Damn knob & tube wiring

The porch light. I thought replacing the porch light wiring would be pretty easy, since the switch is right inside the door and the porch light is right outside the door. You can probably guess how that turned out. I removed the old switch box, too, but to get at the wiring for that porch light, I am gonna have to get in the ceiling somehow.


Once the porch light switch

The upstairs floor. Deciding to just work through my frustration at not understanding the wiring layout of the porch light, I decided to get into the ceiling from above. Sure enough, the wires are in there. I think I'm going to get an electrician in to walk me through doing this circuit and hopefully get off the leash after that. I'm not confident enough to execute on it. Doing all this prep work off the clock will save me money, though.

I did actually cut a hole in the wall of one of the master bedroom closets hoping there would be some crawlspace on the other side of the house. I was greeted by insulation.


Hole in the floor

The failing loft in the garage. There was a loft of incredibly poor design built over the garage door that had begun to sag so low in the center that it was impossible to actually open the door. (There is a side door, too, which is how I got in.) I found an old ladder in the garage and pulled the loft down. It didn't take too much work; the thing was well on its way to the ground already. The hardest part was lugging the half-sheets of plywood out of the way by myself. Now all I have to do is clear out some space in there and I'll be able to park my car under a roof.

Onto the "discovery" portion of our show:

As I was pulling down the ceiling, things began falling to the floor: remnants of what was definitely a stash. An empty pack of cigarettes, a lighter with a bikini girl on it, a bag of Drum tobacco, a couple of Penthouse subscription cards, and some drawings, marginally discernible as naked women.


Ah, the teenage years

Earlier today, I set about making an electrical map of the house. I made simple drawings of each room with notes on where each wiring drop was. Basically, every outlet, light switch, light fixture, thermostat, appliance, etc, etc. I want to index the circuit breaker, both so I know which switch kills what when I need to turn things off, and to wrap my head around the circuit layout of the house.

I crawled behind the furnace, looking for hidden outlets, and found some storage shelving that had not been emptied. The previous homeowner's bank statements from 1991-1993, a mailbox apparently belonging to a houseboat of theirs, an old Polaroid Land camera, a bunch of spice racks (with intact spice jars), a pasta rolling machine, a globe, and a ton of other stuff.


Houseboat mailbox


Polaroid Land camera


Scale model of our earth

And finally, the bad side of what the previous owners left. I was rooting around in the upstairs crawlspace, trying to trace wiring drops. They had thrown tons of junk in there. I found a baby picture and a matte for it, pieces of tubing, shopping bags, a desk lamp, toys, you name it. An unraveled roll of toilet paper, mercifully clean. I threw it all out of the crawlspace -- yet more stuff for the dump.


It Came From The Crawlspace

So, it was pretty annoying to clean out that junk, but that paled in comparison to finding that they had thrown a potted plant in there, upside down, and it had spilled dirt and fertilizer all over the insulation.


Dirt + Fiberglass = Awesome

How the hell am I going to clean that up?

I've been baking a lot of bread on the weekends. It is the ideal thing to do while working on the house, since it's the sort of thing you fuss with for 5 minutes and then leave alone for 3 hours. My lunches will be flush with sandwiches for the foreseeable future.


Hot & Fresh

Join us next weekend, when Katie visits and I accomplish absolutely nothing on the house.

Piece of cake

First, the bad news:


There's supposed to be a wall there


Plaster rubble

If you don't know how plaster walls work, here's a great cutaway view and brief explanation.

I got home from work and surveyed the area where I was going to replace the electrical box and noticed a crack in the plaster. I inspected it more closely and discovered that there was a very large region of the plaster that was completely unattached to the lath. It was being held up by the surrounding plaster, and understandably, beginning to crack. So I got behind it with my trusty scraper and removed the section seen above, all the way down to the lath.

I went to Home Depot and picked up a few more old-work boxes. They didn't have the kind that attaches to the stud. At the recommendation of a helpful HD employee, I bought some hardware cloth (woven metal mesh) to staple over the exposed lath. 1/4" holes = 4 plaster keys/sq in = much more sturdy. I got a cool folding hand saw that uses reciprocating saw blades. I bought a pair of metal cutters for the hardware cloth. Oh, and a 25-lb bag of plaster of Paris.

I saw Tom Douglas pushing a shopping cart around with an enormous tool chest riding on top of it. I wanted to say hi to him, but "Hi, I've never eaten at any of your restaurants, and I don't have any of your cookbooks, but I had a piece of buttermilk cake from Dahlia Bakery once and it was really good!" wasn't the icebreaker I was looking for. So I paid for my stuff and went to Taco Bell.

Then I went home and replaced the hell out of an electrical box.


Ugly, ungrounded outlet


It pops right out

Unfortunately, I couldn't use my shop vac trick of figuring out which breaker this outlet was on because the shop vac needs a grounded outlet. I used some powered speakers hooked up to my AirTunes output in a home-improvement perversion of Musical Chairs. I really need to make a circuit map of the house.

I had already taken the outlet out last week and discovered that despite being ungrounded, it had modern NM cable. Of course, they snipped the ground wire back to the sheathing, so I couldn't just attach it to a new outlet. I had to restrip the cable, which wasn't a big deal.

The new plastic box didn't quite fit in the hole. I bought the folding hand saw in anticipation of this and used it to provide a little breathing room for the tabs that hold the box to the wall. It slipped right in. I turned the screws and it pulled tight against the wall.


Fancy new box, note copper ground wire

I hooked up a new outlet, turned the breaker back on, tested it to make sure it was really grounded, and bang! Done!


Viva las grounding

I popped my roving outlet cover on it to check for marks.


We're gonna need a bigger cover

There are a couple of nicks in the plaster still visible outside the cover, so I'll fix those when I go on my plastering spree. But successfully replacing an electrical box is a load off of my mind. One step closer to having this room rewired, which itself is one step closer to getting the damn thing painted.

Oh yeah, the Internet

Today I was eating lunch with my boss and we were talking about my rewiring project. He is trying to insulate the walls in his older house and is rewiring at the same time. I told him I was being held up because I didn't understand how the retrofit electrical boxes worked. I bought one and didn't understand how it was supposed to attach to the stud.

"All I need is for someone who knows how this works to show me how to do it just once," I said.

"No you don't. You need Google."

So I went back to my desk and Googled for "installing old work boxes" and lo and behold, the answer had been waiting for me there the whole time.

Q: How do old work boxes attach to the stud?

A: They don't. They attach to the wall.

Q: Ohhhh.

I did actually find an old work box design that attaches to the stud, and I think I'll visit you-know-where tonight after work to see if they have any of this type. I'll have to remove the old box from the stud first, but that's no problem.

Now I am all amped up to get home and try it out!

Distraction

Excuses update:

I am easily distracted, and last weekend was no exception. I did finish scraping the wallpaper. I have not started on the final removal stage of steaming and scraping off the leftover adhesive.


The wallpaper, gone

Despite my road-to-hell pavement of finishing the walls, I opted instead to rearrange my bedroom. My bed was in the corner of the room, making it an obnoxious chore to change the sheets. I rotated it 90 degrees and moved it away from the wall, no small feat by myself, and now I can get at it from either side. The only thing left to do is make the bed. I also moved my computer into my bedroom from the cold, cold basement. Making new brick molding for the basement door and insulating it is still hanging over my head.

I have not done any rewiring yet, though I did buy a 50-foot fish tape and 100 feet of NM cable to get myself started. I am going to need to start cutting holes in the ceiling to do any meaningful work. I've decided that my idea to cut a hole in the plywood on the 2nd floor to get at the light fixtures on the main floor is a good one, but that is on hold until I have a couple of outlets under my belt. What is currently holding me up is intimidation, in the form of lack of experience at removing electrical boxes and installing new ones. I bought a couple and I'll take a whack at it this weekend when I can be in the house with plenty of light outside.

On Monday, expect either a tale of having to hire an electrician to bail me out or my obituary. Maybe both.

A variety of other chores and a desire to just sit down for a while have kept me from getting anything done after work. But even if I continue to slack off for the rest of the week, I'll be back in my overalls bright and early Saturday morning. My schedule got all screwed up over the Thanksgiving weekend and I'm still struggling to get back on track. I was really bummed out on Sunday because I woke up late and felt like I had thrown away half a weekend day, when I can get the most work done. I'm going to be in bed early on Friday night, even if it means hitting myself in the head with a cast-iron skillet.

I sent in my first mortgage payment today. I thought it was due on the 10th; it's due on the 1st. Whoops. But I already got the loan, right? Go ahead and wreck my credit, suckers!