Living room rewiring - or, this is why DIY jobs take twice as long as planned

Friday evening we hatched a plan that would have allowed us to avoid the heinous mess of taking down the whole living room ceiling.  We knew we should replace the old wiring before putting up new drywall, but would we need to remove ALL the plaster and lath in order to do replace just the wiring for one light/ceiling fan?  No, of course not! we surmised.  We can just carve out a channel between a couple of joists in the ceiling, add new wires there, take out the old wires (of course they'll be between the same joists), and drywall over the plaster and the small tunnel we just made.  Easy peasy!

Saturday morning we put our plan into action.  Just a few chunks of plaster down.  No problemo, we think.  But oh, what's this we find?  Some wires...old ones...leading UP.  Into the bedroom above.  But where are the wires to the living room ceiling fan?  Hmmm...leading off into whereabouts unknown, most likely through several joists far away from the tunnel we've just dug.  (REALLY glad we're installing a legit ceiling fan support box instead of leaving it screwed directly through the loosening plaster into a board nailed between two joists...no wonder it had taken on a wobble.) And anyway, if we're going to install new wiring to the light, shouldn't we also incorporate the outlets in the room?

Arrrgh. Ceiling demo on hold. To the basement to seek and destroy all things electrical leading to the living room.   Luckily our electrical system isn't a complete disaster; we have a modern circuit panel which was installed by a real electrician in this millennium, who also gave the OK for everything else that was in use.  However, there are still probably four generations of electricity installed in overlapping spiderwebs of wires - 1925 knob and tube, 1940ish metal conduit, 1980something relatively modern stuff, and some stuff from 2003.  That's how you get four living room outlets each with their own singular circuit breaker.  Now there's a waste of circuit panel space if ever there was one.  We disconnected the entryway from the web, and now it has its own circuit with two outlets and an overhead light.  It was clear we needed to do the same thing with the living room.  

Gabe discovering that our three-prong outlets weren't so grounded after all.

I think if I have a midlife crisis, I will go back to school to become an electrician.  Simple home wiring with open walls is pretty easy if you have the right diagrams, and so satisfyingly logical.  Also, as a jewelry maker since the age of 10, I already possess many of the necessary tools for wire bending and snipping. Note the glittery turquoise pliers in the picture above - I bought those to make my bridesmaids' necklaces with.  

Thus we spent our Saturday wiring, not tearing down the ceiling after all. We got almost all done until we discovered that we lacked a three-way switch necessary to complete the job.  Too bad all the hardware stores for miles around are closed by noon on Saturdays. We'll get to those wires leading up into the bedroom above sometime soon I'm sure.