I am re-wiring my house(1.5 storey) that is old(1896) and has lathe and plaster walls. I do not want to tear down all the walls as this is too big for my budget to do. Any ideas will help me greatly.

Thanks

I would call me, seriously.
But serious, do you have an attic and or basement?
Not all Electricians are capable of handling this, some have NO problem running exposed conduit everywhere, not their house.
Can you send pictures and answer from above, thanks

I have an attic and a full unfinished basement. No pics because my camera is on the fritz. My plan is to make one room a separate circuit as there are too many devices on 15 amp breakers. I am thinking of cutting a 12" vertical space above the base board to see what kind of ratsnest there is in the wall. I may have to just run the new wire separately above the old and cut out the old wire in pieces.

Thanks

A lot of the houses this age have 8 or 12 inch surbase. Does yours? You can pull the surbase, notch out behind it, run wire from the basement or crawl and plate the notches.

Since you have access from below, I would drill up from the basement for the recepticles.

Then getting up to the attic for lights and from switch you could go through a closet, if it cannot be fished because of Cats. I like to do these where you don't see any exposed conduits or wiring.

I have done this a few times and it is not as hard as it seems. I cut 4 to 5 inches around the perimeter from the floor and cut up where I want the new boxes installed,I can drill the studs from there and go box to box. You end up patching the areas around the boxes and I use 6 inch baseboards to hide the rest of the damage.This method seems to work fine as long as you get your wires into the centre of the stud as not to screw into them. Good luck,