Yesterday, I starting replacing the old wiring in the upstairs. I shut off the upstairs circuit (yes, the entire upstairs was fed by a single circuit), and started ripping out electrical boxes. Today, I worked primarily on replacing all the outlets in the master bedroom. I realized the other day that I could remove one lath in a narrow strip at the bottom of the walls, thus connecting all the outlets, drill a 1/2 inch hole through each of the studs and fish a cable right around the room. Quick, easy, minimal disruption to the higher up areas of the walls. The biggest advantage though is that I can add new outlets at any point on the walls! Seeing as the master bedroom had only three outlets, I'll be adding at least two more. We were constantly fighting with extension cords when we had the bed up there, so it'll be nice to get rid of them finally. It's also really great not to have to go into the attic to fish wires down through the walls. I've been up there to do electrical work more times than I care to remember, and it's a real pain in the butt to work in an itchy, dirty, dark, cold attic, when you can't even see where the tops of the walls are that you're supposed to be drilling into. For the bedroom, I'm running 12 gauge/20 amp wire, which is kind of a pain to fish and wire up compared to it's thinner 14 gauge/15 amp counterpart, but the extra load carrying capacity makes it (theoretically) run cooler, and thus safer. Plus, we have a lot left over from the bathroom work, so why not use it. Yesterday, I removed one of the three outlets. Today, I removed the other two, and removed a strip of lath right around the room. I drilled all the studs, fished the 12 gauge, and put one box/outlet back in. Z had to get to sleep, and complained about the hammering and stapling (party pooper), so I switched to filling in the strip with joint compound. My method for patching holes is basically to throw whatever I have at hand into the wall as bulk/filler, then butter on a liberal amount of joint compound. I had all the old lath that I had just pulled out, so that made up a lot of the bulk. I also used cedar builder's shims, and in the case of a couple of larger holes, I cut some bits of drywall to fit, then screwed them to the studs or lath before spackling all around. It'll also be nice to get the lights hooked back up again. I used a floor lamp to actually work, but moving around upstairs with a flashlight is testing my patience even after one day.