One Word - SHIT!

I don't like messing up, and thankfully, I don't do it often. But I admit it when I do, and I don't try to blame anything else for my screw up. Here is a perfect example: In dropping the wiring for the second floor from the attic, I have to drill holes blind, which when done correctly will go into the enclosed wall cavity so the wire can be fed down to the switch or outlet served. Bear in mind that this cavity is about an inch wide on outside walls, and there are only vague indicators as to where exactly the correct point to go drilling is. So here I messed up, as is plainly obvious. What I thought would be a nice hole into the space between the plaster/lath and the brick wall, turned out to be a nice hole that exited the ceiling of Rudi's bedroom and carved down six inches of finish wall! Fishing the wire down seemed way too easy, so after I got about 10' down, I went to check, only to find the wire hanging in the room, instead of hidden in the wall. Well, nothing a bit of plaster compound and paint won't fix.

Power Arrives at The Attic

Six branch circuits direct from the panel, and three '3-wire' cables for multi-switch lighting arriving at the attic floor. It was fun locating the top of the wall I had to drill blind into, as you will notice the lath strips are continuous, and the plaster is, almost... The wall was located directly under the area that the plaster 'keys' thinned out and disappeared, as when plastered, the keys could not be pushed up through the lath where a wall was located. If you enlarge the photograph, you can see the way the keys disappear where I have drilled down into the wall to drop the wires.

Vintage Style Boxes

Recently I happened upon one of the neatest electrical boxes for performing retrofit wiring in an older home. Because some of the original wiring had electrical duplex receptacles located horizontally in the baseboard, I decided it would be best to continue locating additional receptacles in the baseboard also.

The problem is that most modern electrical boxes have the openings for wires to enter from the bottom or top end of the box, which makes it extremely difficult to mount the wired box 'blind' (that is fish the wires from the back, out throught the precisely cut out box opening, then into the box, which is then pushed back into the opening).

You will notice that the box pictured has back openings, which permit the wires to be run directly into the back of the box, as opposed to the top or bottom ends, which make installing the wired box a breeze!

I found these at both TimbrMart and Home Hardware, they cost around $3 each, much more expensive than the $1.19 or so for a regular box, but way way easier to install! Check an upcoming post for comparison pictures of installation of these versus standard boxes.