He's going to take out everyone on that list today.

Because this is it, the final walk through before the walls get covered in drywall, and the mechanical systems can't be altered or changed. Oh, we forget something will become an all day ordeal to fix, requiring drywall removal and lots of frustration and then fixing the wall all over again.

Forgetting something, even something super small and easy to overlook, could mean there's no plugging a dryer in or no hot water to a sink or something even smaller ... Mom goes to hang a picture on the wall and get a shock of electricity because we didn't protect wires with nail plates.

The Ram makes it look so easy, but I've got a bruised thumb to tell you otherwise.

Even though the wires are placed in the center of the studs, just in case a long screw or nail is ever used in the wall, the nail plate will certainly put up a fight before you screw into the wires.

There's a ton of these to do. You've got to put a nail plate on each side of the stud, for every single wire, in every single spot it passes through the wall.

Although wires are not run at picture hanging height, there's still drywall and trim to put up, and you never know, $10 Ledges might be in order. Not one nail plate can be forgotten.

On the exterior walls, the wires are run in a deep channel that the Ram cut out with his rockstar chainsaw. But we need something to keep the wires in the channels and also to fill the insulation in.

Spray foam of course!!!

He'll never admit this, but I've got a suspicion that the Ram would make one heck of a cake decorator with his spray foaming abilities. Just saying ... one day this Momplex will be done, and who knows?

Or maybe we'll be building something else.

Once the spray foam dries, it's cut off with a hand saw even with the ICFs like we did here.

All of the wires are stapled off. They have to be stapled next to the box, and then every four feet. Our automatic stapler does not work as advertised, so it's back to the good old hammer and hand staples.

This actually took quite a bit of time too, rounded up all those wires, lassoing them with a special electrical staple, and corralling them to the walls.

But once that's all done, you probably are already thinking it .... how do you hang drywall around all those wires sticking out of the boxes?

Take a seat, it's time to pigtail.

You take the two wires out of the box and strip back the yellow outside.

You are left with a set of black, white and copper wires.

Take the two copper wires - the grounds - and twist together and tuck back in the box.

Then strip the remaining wires back with wire strippers

So the ends of your hots and neutrals are exposed.  Note that we don't have any wires hooked up to actual electricity, but if we did, we of course would flip breakers off before touching any electrical.

Now a short third wire is brought in - usually a scrap cut off from the excess wire - and the three ends are twisted together.

This way when you wire in the outlets, you are only dealing with one wire.

The twisted connection is then covered with a wire nut.

The same is done for the white wires

And then we can neatly tuck wires back in boxes, all ready for drywall.  

And this is done on each and every box throughout two homes.

We love you Mom.

Our friend John, who helped us with the roof, is also going to help us put the drywall up.  Before we put drywall up, we have to put blocking up prepping for later hanging things on walls like curtains and mirrors.  For the interior wood framed walls, it's just wood blocking.  But for the exterior ICF walls, it's even eaiser.  We just bought these metal shingles and screwed them up.  That way when Mom goes to hang curtains, the rods have something to screw into that is solid.

Much easier than fighting a drywall anchor later on!

It was pretty exciting when the drywall truck showed up, but we had a nagging suspicion that we forget something ....

Can you guess what?