Original thread got archived.

Well it's all done. Wanted to say thanks to everyone who provided advice. It was all useful and helped a lot. I ended up using about 1800 ft of 12-2 and some 12-3 for fans. 6-3 for the range and 10-3 for the dryer. It took me 7 18 hour days, 4 of which I had someone helping me. I'm currently repairing drywall and painting. I'm exhausted and have to move this weekend so that will be interesting .

If anyone is thinking of doing this, I ended up spending around $3500 on wiring, outlets, switches, fixtures, and tools. An electrician would have cost me around $15k. Some of the tips I would give are

- don't be afraid to cut another hole if it makes life easier
- cable lube is actually useful
- buy cheap electrical tape for the pulling, use good (super 88 in my case) tape for finish work
- those vibrating tools are very good for accurate cuts on drywal, but dusty

The cringeworthy things we found were

- hidden, drywalled over junction boxes
- lots of singed wires, likely from shorting to the metal boxes when the old insulation cracked because of how the wires were stuffed in the box
- one melted metal outlet box
- a staple through a wire in the attic that has no doubt been there for 50 years
- almost every outlet had originally been installed by putting the aluminum wires into the plug ports in the back (all outlets say no Al ), the. When they pigtailed, they cut those and used the side screws leaving the hot aluminum hanging out in metal boxes
- 2 pairs of circuits run to the back of the house with 10-3 Al but were split circuits sharing a neutral without paired breakers, so there was a hot neutral. This was apparently legal in 1968 when installed.
- and my favorite, someone put up a ceiling fan using the original light box in the living room. The only thing holding the weight was one 2" screw into a 2x6

Honestly most of the issues we found were not due to the Al or the connections, but other stupid shit people had done. All in all I'm very happy we did this before moving in. Makes me feel a lot better. Now I'm going to be adding some new circuits in the garage with more lighting and adding some exterior lights. Will need to have my panel upgraded in the next couple years, but with our newly organized box, should be a piece of cake.

Thanks for posting an update and bonus points for saying "lube is actually useful"..

Why did you use all 12g?

Also what's the sqft of the house

It was suggested and after reading a lot, I decided overbuilding the electrical system was not a bad idea. I have all 20A outlets and 12AWG throughout. It is a pain in the ass the work with in old metal boxes that are smaller than the new plastic boxes. In the areas where I put in new plastic boxes, life was much easier.

ETA 2100 sq ft ranch

I just bought a house and have been replacing some 2 prong outlets and such...

Good news was that it was all already 12ga wire, I had the previous email owners install a circuit breaker panel to replace the fuse panels and 3 sub panels...

The bad news is they don't leave much wire to work with because they had to cram that 12ga wire in their little metal boxes too...

Each one takes twice as long as it should

I bought a mix of 15 and 20 amp outlets, but after 2 20's I am mainly putting the 15s inside and will use the 20s in the garage. I don't even have anything that has a 20 amp plug.

I like the oversize though because my air compressor would trip a 15a breaker about 90% of the time when it kicked on at my old rental until I extended a 20a circuit to the garage.  Now it doesn't matter.

Since they left 2 prong outlets, did they properly ground the panel and run new wire with ground?

they properly grounded the new box, and the wiring all had grounds, they were just screwed to the boxes. House was built in 1960 and maybe just the 2 prong was much more common? I'm not sure, but I was happy to see it.