My house is in massive disarray right now, with wires sticking out of switch boxes and ceilings, holes in the plaster (some intentional, some not) and lifted floorboards that my cats are treating as a new playground. I have light in only a couple rooms, and random working plugs.
My stove works, only because I ran a new (and dedicated) circuit for it a few months ago; ditto on the refrigerator. But there is no light in the kitchen at the moment, and I can’t be bothered to move the stove or fridge to plug in a floor lamp. Instead, I’m relying on the Milwaukee Tools 18V LED/Flood Light ($79 at Home Depot, bare tool only). I’ve been carrying it with me from room to room, and using it to read in bed at night (no light in the bedroom, either, and no working plugs).
Though I hope to rely on it for only one more night before the new circuits are in place and my electrician puts in temporary lights (donkey d*&k lights, I think he calls them?) until I can get the plaster fixed, this lantern is pretty cool. The base swivels and moves the bulbs so it lights a 360° area, or the bulbs can be pointed all in one direction for use as a task light. And, it has four settings; at the full-blast setting (700 lumens), I’ve gotten just more than 17 hours off a full charge. (One of those four is a strobe setting, but I’ve not had a dance party to test that.) It has a split handle on top for hanging, though I’ve been just sitting it on the base.
So if you’re in the market for a battery powered light (with a USB port, to boot), I recommend taking a look at the Milwaukee (particularly if you already have one of their 18V batteries and charger); it’s worked well for me for the past week or so.
Tim (the electrician), tells me that by tomorrow, all the wires poking out the walls and ceilings will be neatly tucked away, properly grounded and hooked up. Then, it’s on to patching the plaster (I’m going to give the walls a go, but hire a plasterer for the ceiling work). Oh, and nailing back down the floorboards – properly – after adding a few supports where a long-ago owner made some bad cuts, leaving a few boards unsupported.
The cats will be devastated. But at least I’ll be able to stop worrying about losing them under the floor.
Rude Mechanicals Press Blog 
Better do a head count before you nail down the floor boards 🙂
Be sure to count the cats before putting that last floorboard in place.
You sure that’s a cat
and not a dust buffalo?
Well, whatever it is, it likes cat treats.
Did you end up deciding to rewire the entire house or just the 80% that went out with the one circuit?
First and second floors only for now (the bulk of the one circuit), and I added a few lights and plugs while things were already torn up — why not. Basement will be redone (and panels combined) when I get the shop entirely laid out, hopefully later this year. Third floor…maybe never.
Good idea to add outlets while you had it torn up. Makes sense. Now the third floor….peace of mind might be worth doing it sometime in the future. Not worth doing all that work on the house and possibly lose it due to faulty wiring.
Tim said with the exception of a few ugly splices, the K&T was in OK shape…and, he’s dropping a coil of wire under the floor or something like that so when/if I decide to do it, it’ll be easier. I just can’t face (or afford) it right now.
I can relate. I have my own wiring issues and while I got it to a safe state I have some more issues to fix and they will cost me some $; hence, they are on hold for now. Good luck.
Suggestion: don’t nail down the boards that are over cable or pipe runs, use screws instead. This makes it way easier to get in there if you decide to add some new technology and use the same cable runs (Cat6 Ethernet?, fibre optics?).
A friend has an 1880’s terrace and all the gas piping for the original gas lights was done like this on the top floor – unfortunately he was out working when the ‘professional’ electricians decided that undoing the screws was too much trouble and used a sledgehammer to smash several floor boards instead to run new wiring, just like they trenched through the lath and plaster walls rather than use the existing runs – needless to say the restoration work is an ongoing project.