Pulling. Wire. Pulling. Wire. Next up on the list of oh-so-dreaded tasks was pulling wire. Remember the previous tasks:

1. Cleaning out all the junk on the first floor

2. Vacuuming the first floor

3. Basement clean-up

4. Basement vacuuming

As we’ve worked on those 4 projects, we’ve also been trying to tame the machine shed and the mess that is outside. It seems like these tasks take us right up to exhaustion just as we finish the task. But forge ahead we must!

Remember the “official” plan for the electrical wiring on a piece of cardboard that we found in the basement? We worked to undo all that today. Based on my aching hands, I’m going to bet that the job of “unwiring” a house may be as hard as, if not harder, than wiring a house. Let me tell you why:

1st: Find one of the hundreds (ok, not hundreds…tens) of blue boxes that the wiring starts at. You’ve got to dig in there and pull out all the wiring. Thankfully they had not installed any switches or outlets. They did, however, have all the copper ground wires twisted together.

 

2nd: Untwist said wire, untangle all the wires, and pull them out the backside of the blue box. A good exercise in dexterity for everyone!

3rd: If that’s not enough, the wiring leading up the 2×4 to the ceiling is secured by the most annoying white fasteners. By far, the worst part of the job was prying the white fasteners out. They need to be taken out VERY carefully as not to nick any of the wiring underneath.

4th: Once the thousands (ok, not thousands) hundreds of white fasteners are removed, then the wire carefully gets pulled out.

So that’s the long answer as to why I think that “unwiring” a house is MORE difficult than wiring one.

We started on the first floor. It felt like we were getting through things quickly but then a really congested area would slow us down. That’s kind of the way the whole day went. The usual suspects that slowed us down were the blue boxes and white fasteners. Uugghh!

We found a lot of signs of past animals. A raccoon left us a nice surprise by balancing it’s poop right along the top of a framed wall. Luckily it didn’t fall and land on one of us!

Next we moved down to the basement. There is a soffit built down the middle of the basement to hold all the wire. Everything was labeled and organized, some in English and some in Spanish.

Luckily there weren’t nearly as many white fasteners so we made quick work of it. Our arms were getting pretty tired from the overhead work we had been doing upstairs.

So now we had a big mess of electrical wiring. Wrap, wrap, wrap. We wrapped the wire and loaded it into our car.

When we first started this project, we had a little problem with thieves. Even with the extra security measures that we added, we thought it best to bring the wire somewhere else. We should have about 90% of the electrical supplies that we need (SCORE!)

Then we could look at the house and see one less project on our list. Little by little, piece by piece, we’re slowly getting it ready to make it our own. This project is definitely not a sprint, but a marathon, and I pray that we can cross the finish line.

Till next time…