Plaster Wall

  My goal was to expose the electrical wires so I could replace them and it ended up as a project to rebuild a lime plaster wall. what a drag.

I'm juggling a few projects right now but I have to focus on the electrical wires. The walls are cosmetic at this point. The ungrounded aluminum wires are more important. Then the metal roof will arrive and I will get into that. But for the next week I have a chance to completely replace the old knob and tube wires with modern grounded Romex. It involved cutting several holes in the ceiling drywall but there isn't an easier solution. It's only a problem because I'm living in the house and cutting holes in the ceiling creates awful drywall dust and also lets the dust of 100 years into the room.

I think this house is closer to something I would call "Cob" and not true adobe brick. It's more like a dirt layer and then covered with lime mortar on the inside and stucco on the outside. I don't see adobe shaped bricks. This is amusing because I went to a village of cob houses and thought they were quite earthy. But the shape of this house is like an adobe house, but it's closer to cob or rammed earth or mud.

This is all relevant because with an earth house the walls need to be able to dry out as fast as the earth so cement interior walls would cause problems by trapping moisture. My goal is to repair the wall surface with something similar to the original so it will not only keep the dirt from falling out but will breathe.