One wall (mostly) in the bag, NEXT wall!

This weekend was full of gorgeous good weather and lots of sunshine - but not too much. We basked in the sun and we reveled in the fact that we'd have an entire extra hour of daylight on Sunday!

On Saturday, the most excellent other half installed the bathroom heater - leaving the wiring for me. I worked on pulling a wire from one side of the crawlspace opening to the other:

This is what took up the bulk of my Saturday. For real. I ran the cable from the opening on the left through the ceiling/wall space above that little closet to the great big hole that I knocked in the wall on the right, then down to the proper hole. The hole only had to be so big because the stupid plaster had broken down behind the wall and nothing could push the lumps out of the way without more access. Argh. Next weekend: hole patching.

On Sunday, Awesome Man laminated thin plywood sheets to the studs and support beams so that the wall patch will match the plaster in thickness, and then I installed the box and stapled the cables.

He spent a good deal of time making perfect drywall hot patches to go around the heater he had put in on Saturday. It looks pretty sweet.
 

Also on Sunday, we went from this:

To this:

The bench top WAS on initially, but I didn't take a photo of that. Taking it off was quite a hassle, but we did it without making any cuts (except in the nails), and I'm quite pleased with us. I'm very happy with this progress because I've been wondering for months how I was going to get electricity over to this side of the room. We're almost ready to paint in here.

Can anyone tell me WHY the wood smelled like feces when I started cutting into it? It was strong and very unpleasant and it created a cloud of yuck that gave me a migraine before I left.

I've also finally developed an excellent way to get romex into old work romex boxes with a) the right amount of insulation inside the box and b) without nicking any wires, thanks to my Klein K1412. I use this tool to cut through the outer sheathing of the cable exactly where I want the sheathing to end inside the box, then pull it halfway off and pull the paper from between the wires. After that, I push the sheathing back onto the wires and pull it through the box clamp. Once it's through, I slide the sheathing back off again and YAY! Perfect, undamaged wire insulation.

Plaster over metal lath

If you own a house with plaster over metal lath, I pity you. I pity myself more, since I've lost more blood and man-hours to The Metal Menace than probably anything else in all of the PolyCottage.

We removed an entire attic wall of this awful stuff, but most of that wall was windows. It still took the two of us two hours to remove a 30-inch by 16 foot section. I was hoping that would be the end of it, but the wiring on the adjoining wall is inaccessible without removing some of it. To compound matters, the entrance to the overhead crawlspace comes in between, so we'll have to remove even more, probably the entire lower 2/3rds. I managed to beat a large hole into it so I could see what was going on behind it. I got my flashlight and started to stick my head into the opening, when ..ouch! Scratched right over the eyebrow with the stupid metal lath. I hate it.

The aforementioned wall, after removing both the horrible falling-apart paneling that had been put over the crumbling plaster and the plaster and rusted lath. Note that this wasn't quite the end of it, as you can see ragged bits that we had to come back and clean up later.

What on earth could the people have been thinking who came up with this? It makes refits so difficult; cutting one tiny hole takes an hour. And God forbid it ever gets damp (as shown, from the inside of the wall) - it rusts out from behind and makes the entire wall look like cottage cheese. Crumbling, dusty cottage cheese. The bonus there is that at least the lath tears when you pull on it hard enough.

I am big on preservation, and I want to maintain the historical aspects of my home wherever possible - but metal lath is not worthy of keeping around (IMHO). The plaster over rock lath on the ground floor, now THAT is some nice wall material.

My method? I hit it with a sledgehammer anywhere there's not a stud, then when I have enough bare lath showing I use my snips to cut through it until I have a flap, which I then pull. I save the larger, intact chunks of plaster that fall to use for patches.

Definitely need lots of fresh air, a good dust mask, eye protection, and tough clothes and gloves. A good crow bar, a flat pry bar, and metal snips are musts.

If you plan on removing small pieces, then you need some kind of rotary tool (I have a RotoZip as well as a Craftsman cut-out saw - the cordless nature of the latter is a definite advantage for me) with a plaster bit to first cut through the plaster in the shape you desire, and then cut the lath underneath with your snips. A steady hand and a good pencil line to follow are very helpful, as is a circle guide for cutting those perfectly round openings we all like so much. Good music helps as well, to make the horrible time-munching seem less bad.