Scary Cabin

Closets can be scary places and the one closet on the second floor is no exception. But not because there are scary creatures living there. The closet walls are filled with many tentacles also known as electric wiring. For such a small room, the amount of wire surrounding it is amazing. The closet is located to your right as enter the front bedroom. It shares it’s back wall with the stairway. So lets start there. The stairway has two light switches and two lights in a 3-way configuration. So all of the wiring for this runs through the back wall of the closet. Then in the closet (on the back wall) is a switch and outlet. The switch controls the outlet which has the closet light plugged into it. So yes, you have to go into the closet and fumble around on the back wall to turn on the light. Convenient. There is another switch and outlet on the outside walls of the closet. Again, the switch controls the outlet which is used for the ceiling fan/light. The switch is located as you enter the bedroom. All this wiring basically means that there are wires running through all four walls of the closet. To make it even more interesting the switches appear to be switching neutral instead of hot.

The “plan” at a high level was to:

1) Move the closet light switch so it’s outside the closet by the closet door.
2) Install a real light in the closet (controlled by the above switch, of course).
3) Remove the switch on the back wall of the closet.
4) Either remove or convert the outlet in the closet to non-switched
5) Convert the outlet that the ceiling fan is plugged into to non-switched
6) Make the switch by the bedroom entry a double gang switch.
7) Move the wire that cuts through the middle of the closet space.

A bit more about 5, 6 and 7. When we replace the ceiling fans, we’re going to use Lutron Maestro MA-LFQHW-WH fan/light controllers. These have a nice switch that controls both the fan speed and light level remotely. So no need to run a wire from the switch to the fan. Also, it would be nice to have a simple switch that controls a normal light in the room, hence the double gang box. The Closet actually runs all the way to the edge of the house and it had it’s own knee wall that blocked off some of that very low ceiling space. That knee wall also had the wire to the outlet running through the middle of it. We removed the wall and though that it would be good to open that space up and use if for storage.

It took about 6 hours to make all those changes. Nine holes were cut in the sheetrock to gain access to the wires. Everything is wired according to plan and the holes have been patched.

While Bob did most of the re-wire, Genny was out in the yard cleaning some of the overgrown path and clearing spiderwebs from around the house.

Once we came out of the closet, we hung some more sheetrock getting us a bit closer to finishing the upstairs.