Hey folks.

My house has some sections where the studs are about 1 3/4″x2 3/4″. These walls seem to be the original house — some other sections that were built as additions have approximately modern-sized 2×4.

I’m re-framing/adding larger windows, and re-wiring (electrician is involved). I’m a bit paralyzed by what to do about the size of the existing studs in those walls, though. The house has stood for this long (not sure how old but at least 80 years), through some pretty rough winters and bad wind storms. It must have been strong enough, but I certainly don’t want to make it weaker.

Normally I guess we would run the wiring with 3/4″ holes right through the middle of the studs. In a modern 2×4, that would take the material in the depth of the stud from 3 1/2″ to 2 3/4″. In my house it would take me from 2 3/4″ to only 2″. That seems pretty sketchy for a house that’s already basically “well it’s messed up, but it’s still there.”

To make matters weirder, there’s not really a top or bottom plate to the wall framing. The studs just sit on the subfloor and they extend past the ceiling of the room and into the attic:

 

Now, to get it out of the way off the bat: I don’t think it’s feasible to fully rebuild the walls. They’re built so oddly (see above), it seems a bit sketchy to replace. And I don’t think I could tie the new studs into the house’ sheathing (3/4″ boards nailed on horizontally to the outside) without taking off all of the siding while rebuilding the walls. I wish I could do it, but it’s just too much time and money.

I just want to do it “right.” But in this non-standard house, how to do that is less obvious. I’ve mainly come up with three ideas to try and run wiring through these walls without compromising structure:

1. Don’t go through studs. Run all of the wiring up from the basement into the attic and then down into the wall, directly to each switch/receptacle. Why not run right from basement to the receptacles? The wall sits on a big beam/sill that I don’t think I can go through.

   All of the wiring would be vertical and not have to go through studs at all. The major downsides are that I couldn’t have receptacles under windows, it would use a tonne more wire (though it is a small house), and I guess it would require junction boxes in the attic.

    

2. New studs sistered to old. I could add new 3 1/2″ studs next to/attached the old ones. Then I can drill through them as normal and mostly feel fine about it because of the extra strength of the additional studs: the drywall can hang on the new studs; and the exterior sheathing can stay attached to the old studs.

   But like I mentioned, I’m not sure I can really tie these studs into the roof structure above the way the old ones are, so it might end up like, a 10′ old stud sistered up with only 8′ of new stud. Maybe that’s still worthless, I don’t know.

   Then there’s just the lost R-value of having twice the number of studs in the wall where insulation could be, though again, small house and I have a heat pump, so it’s probably not a big deal.

    

3. Strapping over studs and nail plates. If I add horizontal 1×3 strapping on the studs, wires can go over the studs/between the strapping, and drywall can be hung on the strapping.

   I think this has some merit, though the wiring going over studs would be right behind the drywall, so it would need lots of nail plates.