Lime Plaster

There's definitely an argument for leaving everything alone, like this wall that I know is drywall framed over a plaster wall because someone decided to hide problems rather than deal with them.

But the electrical wires are back there, and the drywall had been wet once before, and it's easy to replace but the drywall is currently in the way of my project, so I had to get rid of it.

Time to tear down this drywall

what a mess. 40 years of neglect just falls from the wall.  If I wasn't careful I would've dug a hole right onto the alley.

Although that looks like modern Romex wire, it's actually 12/2 WITH NO GROUND WIRE. I don't know why they manufactured residential Romex without a ground, but I guess they wanted to make sure it was useless to me.

The big question is what is this made of? I determined the wall is 

adobe or compressed mud, covered with a basic lime/sand mortar. It's not modern plaster and the moisture caused the mortar to crumble. The dirt wall is basically in good shape.
 

Do, I buy Type S Lime and some sand...

Mix up a paste of lime...then add sand until I get something like plaster consistency.

This is not easy to do neatly, and I'm not very neat when it comes to plaster in the first place. I'm dealing with a dirt house on an alley and as long as the mortar stays in place and dries up and keeps the dirt inside the wall, I really don't care if there are variations in the surface. So far, it's working. The lime/sand mortar hardens and adheres. I plan to tint some limewash to paint the surface and let net nature take its course.   

The main priority is replacing the wiring with modern Romex. I was recently able to replace all the exterior wiring to the first outlet or junction box inside the house...so all the circuits are independent for the first time in a year. Previously, someone ran 3 white wires from the panel for the hot wires, and a single white wire for the neutral wire. And then at the last junction box before a split of the three circuits they simply spliced into the single neutral with 3 wires to create the neutral path from the circuits. This means that when I shut off one circuit breaker I still have an active neutral from each of the other two circuits that is connected to the circuit that I shut off. Perfect! I did test the circuit and found no current but I didn't totally trust that a spliced neutral would not accidentally choose my fingers as the shortest path to ground rather than go back to the breaker box.

So, now I have modern wires from the breaker, in conduit, the correct color and independent for each circuit, AND there are no frivolous splices in junction boxes where I know I will never need a splice again. Previously, I had a splice in 3 different junction boxes for no reason. It was just splicing two short sections of wire, which is something I can't live with. And it was stranded 12 gauge wire, which I'm not sure is even correct for interior residential.

In the rafters is Classic knob and tube 10 gauge aluminum wire from the 40s or 50s. And I'm in a town with the biggest copper mine in America, and they used Aluminum wire. Some bitter irony right there but I think it was WWII that caused a shortage of copper wire so they used Aluminum before they realized this mismatch of aluminum and copper was a bad idea.

 I have to cut a hole next to each light and then pray I can fish or pull new wire from each switch leg back to a new junction box and then to the light. I think the worst that needs to happen is I cut into the ceiling drywall to facilitate pulling the wire. I'm not a fan of destroying drywall while I'm living in a house. I don't believe in sanding drywall mud when I repair it due to the dust it creates, so the best thing is to avoid using drywall mud by avoiding cutting any drywall. Irregular surfaces on obvious drywall joints is not a detail I care about now or ever. The trick is to make the joints so obvious it looks like it was on purpose. Or just cover them with some trim so it looks fancy.