That rock wasn't supposed to come out. Neither were the other
twenty or so I knocked out of there...
Old stone houses are neat in that they are very sturdy and
nearly permament - my house is practically a fortress. But it also
makes them rather frustrating when it comes to upgrades and
remodeling in that nothing comes easily. Take this rewiring project
for example. I think I mentioned before that I was chisling grooves
in the walls to run conduit in. Well, the problem with that is that
the walls are filled full of granite rocks. Granite rocks are
hard. Who knew?! They don't cut, they just come loose from
the mortar and fall out. Which wouldn't be some much of a problem
except a fair number of them are rather large - they go from one
side of the wall all the way to the other. So my 2 inch deep groove
becomes a hole clean through from one room to the other! Oops, I'm
gonna want to fix that....
I just figured out something - I shouldn't have started off with
the roto-hammer. Instead, I should start by sawing several lines in
the channel with dry-diamond saw blades in the circular saw. But
whoa, I thought I had a problem with rock dust before! Sheesh! It
just coats everything! My cloths, my hair, my lungs, the floors,
walls, furniture, cats....
Well no, not the cats - they have the good sense to run and hide
upstairs while I'm doing this. I don't think it's the sound of the
roto-hammer so much as it is the sound of the debris raining down
and the resulting dust cloud they hate. And we won't even mention
what they think of the circular saw...
I know they make these nice brass conduits and stuff for running
electrical outside of walls such as these, but I didn't want to do
it that way because I don't think it looks as good. But I'm
beginning to re-think the wisdom of my decision... After all, this
is more like a comedy of errors than HGTV - instead of writing
about it, it would be much more entertaining to film it. I could
get some clips on
America's funniest home videos. Or maybe even produce my own
sit-com from it. I guess since I started it this way, I'll keep on
doing it this way though. And keep on hacking up rock dust...