As I move towards plastering the walls, the last batch of structural repairs is moving another outlet. This is the last of the 3 outlets that were moved by electricians from surface mount to in-wall mounting. As mentioned previously, the electricians used the old work boxes that hooked the boxes into the lath. This gets the job done, but it causes a few problems because after you saw through the lath, they become loose so the box doesn’t have a firm base. Also, the 2 clips used on old work boxes to secure against the lath are pretty weak. They don’t seem to offer a firm grip and also I’ve seen the clips snap since they are just plastic. So I follow the same repair where I move the box against the nearest stud and secure it using screws. This box is a junction so it’s got 3 wires all joining together which made it a little difficult to deal with. I don’t want to remove all the splices, so I end up cutting out the back of the plastic box to remove the wires and then rethread the wires back into the new work box. I get that secured to the stud and then start cutting a piece of drywall for a small patch.

Once I get the repair sized to fit the hole, I add some plaster washers and then secure the patch with drywall screws. After that I put down some Durabond 90 and smooth over the cracks with nylon tape. There’s a small lump compared to the other repair. It seems like the thickness of this wall is a lot thinner compared to the exterior wall’s thickness. That repair was recessed while this repair is slightly bulging. Hopefully when I build up the plaster repairs to cover the washers, I’ll smooth out this bulge.

With the plaster patch done, back to woodwork. The closet door is finished with 3 coats of stain. I’ll let that dry and do a light sanding next week. The main door needs 2 more coats of stain. First I sand away some of the blotches and apply another coat of stain.

After the second coat dries, I do another coat of stain to try and hide any cracks and holes. Similar to the closet, I’ll let this dry and then do a light sanding next week before starting the shellac coats.

The rest of the work is just stripping molding. I use the combo of the SpeedHeater along with the more intense stripper followed by alcohol wipe downs to remove all the gunk. I get most of the windows done with just a few more parts of the door jam to finish up.