The "quick five minute" project that took 6 hours thanks to the mess I found from prior DIYers....
I decided to change out some old light switches that controlled the light over my kitchen sink and the overhead light in the utility room off the kitchen. I had already put some nicer ones in when I ran new electric for some new lights on the other side of our kitchen, and I wanted everything to match. So I thought, what the heck this should be a quick and easy fix. Took off the cover plate to find an absolute mess inside from someone else's diy attempt long before I bought the place. Pics in order Discovering the mess...realizing, once again, nothing is ever easy in this house and my quick 5 minute diy was going to take over my day instead. A second junction box had been shoved in next to the original, to run lighting over to the sink. It wasn't attached to anything, just sort of loosely hanging in the wall. Pulled the 2nd switch to find where they tried to wire in some random attempt at a pigtail to add the new light. Not pictured, the massive black wire nut tapped to the neutral wires with about a foot of electrical tape. Finding the melted wiring. Lucky the house didn't burn down. Yikes!!! Not pictured, the hole I had to cut to get the mangled boxes out. The old kitchen light, which wasn't centered over the sink, and had about an extra mile more of wiring than needed, shoved into the soffit space. It was old cloth sheath Romex and frayed to hell, so had to replace that too (definitely was not part of the plan for the day) My not so elegant solution to avoid shoving entirely too much into a outlet box, because what little wiring was left to work with meant I had to pigtail all of the old wiring. (It's an old house and half the outlets in my house also ran to this damn light switch). Ended up installing a new junction box on the other side of the wall, in the adjoining utility room. (No, it's not to code, I know it isn't. Lol. It's not melting though, it's not overloaded, the connections are secure, the correct size wirenuts are actually used, all wiring is not random mismatch gauge, its grounded. It's ugly, but it gets the job done. I'm not an electrician, but I know enough not to do absolutely dumb stuff.) The point where my give a damn just up and walked away. Lol. Junction box is "accessible" but covered so nobody goes and shoves something in it. Back to the light switch! New gang box installed, new light switch in, drywall (mostly) patched. The very simple task of switching out a couple light switches, (finally) completed!! New wire ran to the light (I had to shove both arms into insulation filled walls to get the fishtape past two turns, that was not fun). New junction box installed... And brand new light fixture that's actually centered over the sink!! The only thing I wanted to do was swap out the light switches...
Jun 22, 2025 - 19:00
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I decided to change out some old light switches that controlled the light over my kitchen sink and the overhead light in the utility room off the kitchen. I had already put some nicer ones in when I ran new electric for some new lights on the other side of our kitchen, and I wanted everything to match. So I thought, what the heck this should be a quick and easy fix. Took off the cover plate to find an absolute mess inside from someone else's diy attempt long before I bought the place.
Pics in order
Discovering the mess...realizing, once again, nothing is ever easy in this house and my quick 5 minute diy was going to take over my day instead. A second junction box had been shoved in next to the original, to run lighting over to the sink. It wasn't attached to anything, just sort of loosely hanging in the wall.
Pulled the 2nd switch to find where they tried to wire in some random attempt at a pigtail to add the new light. Not pictured, the massive black wire nut tapped to the neutral wires with about a foot of electrical tape.
Finding the melted wiring. Lucky the house didn't burn down. Yikes!!! Not pictured, the hole I had to cut to get the mangled boxes out.
The old kitchen light, which wasn't centered over the sink, and had about an extra mile more of wiring than needed, shoved into the soffit space. It was old cloth sheath Romex and frayed to hell, so had to replace that too (definitely was not part of the plan for the day)
My not so elegant solution to avoid shoving entirely too much into a outlet box, because what little wiring was left to work with meant I had to pigtail all of the old wiring. (It's an old house and half the outlets in my house also ran to this damn light switch). Ended up installing a new junction box on the other side of the wall, in the adjoining utility room. (No, it's not to code, I know it isn't. Lol. It's not melting though, it's not overloaded, the connections are secure, the correct size wirenuts are actually used, all wiring is not random mismatch gauge, its grounded. It's ugly, but it gets the job done. I'm not an electrician, but I know enough not to do absolutely dumb stuff.)
The point where my give a damn just up and walked away. Lol. Junction box is "accessible" but covered so nobody goes and shoves something in it.
Back to the light switch! New gang box installed, new light switch in, drywall (mostly) patched. The very simple task of switching out a couple light switches, (finally) completed!!
New wire ran to the light (I had to shove both arms into insulation filled walls to get the fishtape past two turns, that was not fun). New junction box installed... And brand new light fixture that's actually centered over the sink!!
The only thing I wanted to do was swap out the light switches...
