Everything takes longer than you think

Cut the power, pulled the medicine cabinet, opened the wall. That's all.

When you hit drywall with an ordinary carpenter hammer you can usually turn it sideways to maximize the damage, you get a nice satisfying "Smock!" - and the whole head goes clean through. Usually. Not here. I hit this wall with the business face at half-speed and nothing happened. Took three tries with increasing moderate force and all I got out of that was a half inch hole. Knocking out a small rectangle took twenty minutes. Very ugly. Just what the hell kind of drywall IS this?

Well, got my keyhole saw out thinking that I would have to saw the wall away then noticed that it is a full one inch thick. What? ... ah, I see what you did there ... THIS stuff is regular wallboard and a double layer of plaster over it. Always wondered why the walls in the rest of the house were crappy ragged peeling away and the bathroom the only square, smooth room in the joint. So I grab my trusty jigsaw and start to trim it out with power, arrgh! and of course this fills the air in (both bathroom and sunroom) with choking fine white powdery dust. Just freaking lovely, and you can trace my track by the footprints all over the house, of which there are many because, you see, whenever you are working on two sides of the same wall from two different rooms there will be many, many occasions you need exactly the sidecutters and gaze longingly at them sitting peacefully on the table out of reach in the other room through the hole you just opened.

Note to self: Google "plaster dust hazards"

And now a note on the beautiful subtleties of home improvement. Today was a day I once again fully understood the admonitions in my favorite renovation books that taking on an old home destroys family and domestic bliss. I spent all day and this is all I have to show for it. But I take my time because that is my basic currency these days; I can trade my own labors for speed. Here is the backside, the sunroom ... a number of things to take note of here, some of which really piss me off:

• "T" framing in opening to be removed for glass block, no big deal, but notice the angle cut below it. That is where the original stud was cut out when the add-on kitchen was built. Trouble is, this is a load bearing wall and there was NO provision for taking the strain. I will have to construct a doubler above to bridge the opening and place a cripple stud above it to lay the strain off against the two studs they did not cut on either side.
• Whole lot of bastard framing goin' on.
• This is LUMBER here, folks. An honest 2" by 4". Rough cut. None of this dimensional, nominal stuff you buy at Lowe's. Probably milled on site back in the 19teens. Compare the darker studs with the amber one at right used to frame in the bathroom closet I removed. I can smell the pungent pine sap every time I saw or drill.
• The white and yellow wires lower left are new, installed by me. The outlet box lower right (seen from behind) was original to the house, the wires I cut are visible above it. I got to it just in time.
• DAMNIT. Look at this. The top neutral wire isn't covered by the outlet screw, in fact I do not know what was holding it at all. When I put a screwdriver to the screw there wasn't any torque to it. It was twinned with another to jump the power off this outlet to an overhead light, which isn't in itself wrong, but myself I would run one pigtail under the screw and splice the second circuit into it somewhere back inside the box. Not try to get two #12s under a screw post meant for one.
• Second side, the hot, are covered ... BUT ... the "buttonhooks" faced two directions! DAMNIT. The bottom one, the wrong-way one, will always be squished out from flush contact with the screw terminal when you torque the screw. How much time does it take to get the righty-tighty?
• I am so anal retentive over such stuff that I will often take a half hour just to install one outlet when I rewire. Take care not to nick the conductor when I strip the insulation off . Twist the buttonhook with my needle nose "just so" that I get a 3/4 turn and you can't see copper protruding from the screw when I'm done. Torque it down to specs, always. Wrap a turn of electrician's tape around the outlet terminals before I stuff everything in the box. Use #12 gauge when the code says I can use #14 gauge, #10 when it says #12. Loose connections cause sparks, sparks cause fires.
  
• Note no fire blocks anywhere between studs. And, this place was balloon framed, which means the studs run from the foundation footer all the way to the roof joists. One spark and everything goes. Bring hotdogs.
  
• Two wire, no ground. Rubber insulation crumbling from age. Jesus

Also today: Pickup would not start, dead battery. Lawnmower quit on me halfway through. Finally had to stop to think about dinner and I just could not stand myself. I stunk. So I rigged a shower using a sprinkler head and a wire deck chair. Can't say I recommend it but at least it has been in the 90s every day for a week and if you stink bad enough you don't think about the 60 degree water. Much. Interesting getting to all of the bitty parts, though ... let's just say I know something about how a bidet must feel.

End of the trail