When taking ownership of our home, one of the major things we knew we'd need to eventually do was completely replace the electrical, as the home had all original 1921 knob and tube wiring. When you'd flip on the lights, you'd hear a slight buzzing noise and many of the rooms only had one outlet each. The inside of our closet had a wire hanging down from the ceiling with a light bulb attached that practically hit you in the head when you walked in. (Why I don't have a "before" picture of that is beyond me.) Any additional wiring that had been added was spliced and literally taped off and hanging in the attic or under the house. I didn't see it myself, but those who did described it to me as a nest of wires just waiting to ignite. Awesome. While in escrow I had a dream that the hallway sconce caught the house on fire and needless to say, that was a bit unsettling. Now that I'm typing this, I'm wondering how the place never burned down in real life.
Timing being everything, a deal popped up on Angie's List advertising exactly what we needed, at a price that wasn't AS mind boggling as a job like this would have been otherwise, so we jumped on it.
From start to finish, the entire process took about a month. It was kind of crazy when it was going on because they had to drill out sections of the walls, and due to the age of the home, some parts of the wall would just start crumbling as the cuts were being made. All of the old wires, outlets, switches, etc were ripped out and replaced with brand-spanking-new-up-to-code electrical goodness. I'll post mostly "before and in progress" pics, because who really cares about looking at new outlets. Not very exciting. Revisiting these photos almost a year later is a nice reminder of how much was accomplished though. I've gotten really good at only seeing what still needs to be done and am trying to get better at appreciating how far things have come.