Finding cool stuff in walls

Removing the drywall revealed some more knob and tube that seems to have been for the old light switch in the room, but not used anymore.  It's interesting they have a second jacket on the wire since its not being held away from everything flammable by the knob and tubes.

Behind the laths you can see an old medicine cabinet, and from the other side you can see where the sink used to mounted as well as the drain for it.  The light above the cabinet was still being used for the closet, powered by knob and tube.

Looks like the put one of the new outlets in where the original outlet was, you can see the ends of the knob and tube here too.

Just more cleaning...

Easiest way to get the wood out is just through the window, I actually saved a lot of this wood since it's a nice size and in good shape.  This was what the ceiling tiles were stapled to.

And the inside after getting rid of most the stuff, I left this one stud that really shouldn't be load bearing, but it seems to be now.  When I hit it with a hammer I can feel and hear the vibrations through the rest of the house, and none of the others did that.

More walls and interesting wiring

Took out more walls, now the two rooms are actually connected

It seems the GFCI in the bathroom is grounded to the pipes as well as this extra bond to the plumbing?  I'm not really sure what the goal of this is since all of the water supply lines in the house are copper.

Cleaning up plaster

Here's what that hose system looked like from the outside (but on the front room now)

After filling this about half way up, I realized there was absolutely no way I was getting into the bed of my truck since plaster is incredibly dense, like significantly more than modern drywall.  To get this and some of the smaller carts in, I had to actually take some of the stuff out.  Clearly the best solution to this problem is to just park the truck in the front yard.  Duallys sink in less right?

And here's what the hose looked like from the inside

Taking out more interior walls

Now to take that closet wall out in the front room

Hey look, some knob and tube wiring, cool

That plastic to stop the dust was falling down, so I decided to move it

Cleaning up that mess

I thought that moving the material actually through the house would make too much of a mess, so I decided to use the 8" hose from a server blower I had to get the material from the window to the garbage cart on the ground.  At this point I was also very concerned about asbestos since the first thing I saw when I googled "Beaver Bestwall" was asbestos remediation.  Based of a lot more googling a lot of people said that drywall never had asbestos in it, and it was just the joint compound, but I still wore a P100 respirator so I wouldn't breath any of it in while I was working as well as putting fans in the windows to create a negative pressure to keep the dust out of the rest of the house.  And after more research, it seems the people who get mesothelioma worked with asbestos constantly their entire working lives without a mask, so I'm probably fine.

I also decided to take out that OSB wall, and to get most of the plaster off the wall in that closet I just kicked the wall from the other side, which was fun.

Hidden spaces

What better thing to do on the 4th of July is there than to tear down some inside walls?  Obviously nothing.

Turns out someone decided to make the stairs enclosed and cramped for basically no reason...

Here's a look at that wallpaper

And after getting all the other inside walls down, it's interesting that all the 2x4's are sideways

And here's the one outlet for that bedroom next to the light switch

For some unknown reason, the one wall of the closet in the front bedroom is OSB

This is the drywall that was used

Nice mess to clean up

For some reason I found it funny that you could see into the room from the stairs now, even though it doesn't come across well in picture

I also figured it'd be a good idea to put up some plastic to help keep the dust out of the rest of the house