front porch light.

Whoo boy. It always seems so simple. Case in point -

I wanted a front porch light.

So I bought it a few weeks ago from Rejuvenation (of course) cos they were running a porch sale (of course - I've only ever really bought anything from them when they had a sale or a promotion or I found it in the scratch-n-dent section). A simple thing to hook up, right? There was a beautiful, previous porch light after all ...

Well, haha - not so much.

But time to put on my electrician's cap (uhh, and belt) -

I knew the old light had been powered with the last of the original knob and tube wiring (the only remaining circuit to use the stuff was #11 - the ceiling lights, most of which I had ripped out long ago cos ceiling lights in general suck - like in bedrooms and stuff). So I knew I'd have to deal with that. I didn't know the extent of it until yesterday when I headed up to the attic.

I knew there was new Romex running out of the panel cos the whole panel had been upgraded (to 60A) at some point. So that meant somewhere (the key being 'somewhere') there was a splice where the Romex and the knob and tube were patched together. The trick was finding the splice. Fortunately, there was only that one circuit that still used the knob and tube so I could trace it with a tester since it was the only live knob and tube wire (since there was a mess of the stuff snaking all over the attic this was a huge help). But this still meant basically crawling over insulation all over the attic following the live old wiring to find the splice. But after maybe half an hour - hallelujiah! - I found it!

And then I remembered it - I had put that junction box in back when I rewired the kitchen cos whoever did the splice just had the bare wires (well, with wire caps) hanging loose in the attic. I shut off the circuit back at the breaker, disconnected the splice, switched the power back on and tested the Romex on the left side - power! And no power on the knob and tube. Meaning that was indeed the cable coming out of the box that I could splice into with new Romex cable and run to the front porch.

The next challenge was to figure out the wiring schematic for a circuit that was to have multiple lights (I am putting all ceiling lights on this circuit) all controlled by their own switches. After searching the web (and not finding much) and then a call to good ol' McLendons I was able to figure it out and draw up a diagram -

I love electrical stuff (as I've mentioned I think) but sometimes it's confusing as all get out. Once drawn out though it made sense - it's a mess of wires in each box but both the hot and neutrals loop through the circuit in series from box to box and the extra 14/2 cable to each fixture then is what turns each of them off/on (while maintaining hot/neutral over the entire circuit). And anyways, I had just bought a new 250' spool of 14/2 cable so I was good to go. So I headed back up into the attic to run the cable. Had to drill holes through the joist headers in the walls and run my (priceless) fish tape down to the hole I had cut out for the new electrical box, then back up and pull the cable through. A few times.

And then - just for fun - I decided to turn one of the living room outlets into a switched outlet. So I had to crawl under the living room through the crawl space (uhh, thank goodness my house sits high so it's pretty roomy under there albeit a bit dirty) and drill up - hoping not to drill through my living room floor and instead actually make the mark inside the wall. I was apparently blessed with some good luck cos everything worked okay and I got the new cable strung from the new box by the front door (with the new front porch light switch) over to an outlet on the side of the house without issue -

And after all of that - up and down the ladder to the attic over + over, under the house over + over, etc. etc. etc. stringing cables through insulation blah blah blah it all came down to one moment (the moment I love and dread at the same time) - turn the circuit back on and flip the switch.

(hold breath ... )

Boom!

It worked!

Ahh, good times. Now I still have to finish the circuit though - hitting up Julian's closet light (which while I'm doing that I'm going to replace it with a recessed can), the Jack and Jill bath lights (two wall sconces, a recessed can above the shower and a fixture above where the medicine cabinet will be) and my bedroom lights (since both of those rooms are stupidly on the same circuit as the fridge).