Procrastinet

"Towards a 2BR" Part IV: I Want My Mummy

filed under: Demolishments and Renewvations

Previously: Part I, Part II, Part III

Day 10, Tuesday: Started re-wiring the bedrooms today. I was feeling pretty chirpy about how much I could get done in short order - wiring is relatively straightforward, and compared to the basement this job is pretty easy. I toyed with the notion of banging through it in one night.

Then I decided to make a "quick trip" to the Home Despot to pick up a second ceiling fan support bar (Lowe's ran out). Which really was a quick trip. But when I got back there were no decent parking spots on our block. So I figured I'd run to Lowe's and return the too-long down-bars I bought for the fans. Then there was a line at the return desk and a line at the register and still no god damned parking and by the time my quick trip was over it was 8:45pm and I hadn't done a lick of work.

Working through a sulk, I chopped into the wall to make room for new switch boxes, and figured out the rather haphazard wiring the room already had:

Why, I wondered, is one - but only one - of the receptacles on the same breaker as the bathroom? Why do the living room lights and receptacles get power from a box in our bedroom, even though it's farther from the breakers than the living room is? Why was our bedroom light going on and off as I worked on the wall?

(Actually, the answer to this last turned out to be pretty straightforward, if disheartening: because the switch was (a) poorly wired and (b) BROKEN IN HALF. It's a wonder we never burned in our sleep.)

Most exciting, though, was a discovery I made while groping around in our ceiling, trying to figure out where to install the fans:

I saw something odd peeking out over the drywall. On closer inspection it turned out to be a TINY SKELETAL FOOT.

I have heard, on occasion, the skittering of mice in our ceiling before. I know the rest of the building has a mouse problem, but with four cats we don't know from mice problems. One poor little beggar got himself dead up there, and promptly mummified:

More below...

Here's the poor blighter's teeny tiny little skull:

Here's the face I would have made if I had come upon his little corpse accidentally without being forwarned by his little peeking foot:

And here's the proof that I'm not nearly as averse to chopping up drywall as I used to be:

When drywall, and more specifically its installation and repair, was still a mystery to me, I hated to cut into the wall and would instead go to great lengths to work within absurdly small cutaways. I imagine it's something like how a surgeon feels: to your ordinary Joe a person's skin is inviolate and must be preserved totally intact, where a surgeon realizes that you can perfectly well cut through it, do what you have to do and stitch it back up. Not that you don't want to minimize it, just that you don't have to be a freak about it.

Not that surgeons are comparable to some dude doing drywall. After all, surgeons train for years and years and have people's lives and health in their hands whereas all dudes doing drywall have to understand is a screwdriver and all that's on the line is their wall.

Posted by rjt at July 6, 2005 12:37 PM