Rewiring a House: Part 1

Before the weekend we started the first step in the electrical work: tearing down the basement ceiling. I use the term ‘ceiling’ lightly here. Our ceiling was comprised mostly of particle board and cardboard. That’s right. Cardboard.

Tearing it down was super easy. It took about an hour in total, and we were left with the exposed beams. Not only will this give us a tiny bit more height (we need every centimetre at this point), but it will also allow us easier access to do the electrical work (Phase 2).

While the tearing down the ceiling was easy, cleaning up the aftermath was time consuming, slightly painful and much less fun. Louise and I spent most of Saturday hauling garbage bags full of crap up from the basement to outside.

While we worked on the basement demolition aftermath, Dad and Alex started the electrical work. The first step was to cut a hole to the attic so that they could run the cables from the basement.

They weren’t really sure what they’d find up there… But it turned out to be a huge attic with lots of potential!

Once they had access, they spent the rest of the weekend drilling holes in walls and creating tunnels to run the cables through the house.

It seems easy, but wasn’t. The house is a bit of a jerk and is making everything really complicated. The outside is brick, and when they constructed the house, they put a lot of mortar between the brick. I guess for extra strength? The result for us, however, is that instead of drilling through wood, we’re drilling through a combination of things: including bit chunks of mortar that fell as it was applied to the brick. It’s a mess. A really strong, solid mess.

Not all holes were so crazy. Most are just large enough so that they could run their arm halfway up the wall and feed the cables.

Then I ran a half marathon: