What's the easiest way to reframe a portion of a wall with minimal disturbance to the electrical lines?

Question

I'm in the process of remodeling a bathroom and need to re-frame a portion of the wall that had water/termite damage. The wood work itself shouldn't be too hard but there are romex lines running through the bottom of it:

I really don't want to run new lines all the way from the breaker box. What's the easiest way handle electrical here? I was originally thinking:

1) Shut off power.

2) Cut line and remove the both ends from the funky wall.

3) Fix the wall/frame.

4) Drill holes and reinsert the wire

5) Add a junction box and reconnect the wires.

The first issue though is that I don't think there's enough slack here.

So does that mean that I'll have to cut the wire and replace at least replace the part from the cut to the bathroom light, switch, etc?

Answer 1

The best way to deal with this, since you have the walls open, is to turn off the power and then find the nearby electrical boxes where these wires terminate and un-string the wires back out through your framing area. After new framing is in place then drill new holes for the wires and re-string them back to their destinations.

In some instances these wires will just be passing by the area where the walls are open but not terminate in any boxes in the open wall area. In this case life gets all that much more complicated. There are several strategies to deal with the latter, none of which are particularly good ones.

1 - You can notch the new studs to let the wires pass by. This requires extra care to protect the wires including the placement of nail / screw stopper plates over the notches.

2 - Cut the wires near the center. Then you could choose to add some new outlets to that wall and use the electrical boxes behind the outlets as splice points to support adding the new length of wiring needed to bridge the circuits back together.

Answer 2

If your area allows, you can do the following:

1. Cut the power
2. With a small saw, cut above and below the wire so you can remove the piece facing you on the stud - should leave the wire floating free and the channel should be no more than 1 inch in height.
3. Gently pull the wires out, cut the stud in two and remove
4. On your new studs, cut a channel through the 2" side about 3/4" deep by 1/2" in height, make sure to measure so this falls where the current lines run.
5. Angle in all studs behind the wires, then set the studs vertical and nail in place.
6. Make sure the wires run through the slots you cut.
7. Nail on a Nail Plate to cover the channel and wires (see below)

Nail plates are typically used to protect pipes and wiring after the drywall is up and someone wants to drive a nail to hang a picture. Here in Colorado they are also used how I described.