A couple of months back, we bought a new corner unit and sink from Ikea. That's what initiated the whole kitchen remodel insanity that is still ongoing. We used to have a double-bowl stainless jobbie, which was very poorly positioned in the only location capable of receiving a dishwasher. 3 years without a dishwasher. The horror! Our new sink is a huge single-bowl porcelain affair, set into a natural oil-finished wood counter top. As with all things old house, changing one thing has a knock-on effect until the next thing you know you're demolishing half the kitchen. Dishwasher -> relocate sink -> relocate stove -> remove half the bloody cabinets in the kitchen. It's a good thing we knew we had to do all that before we actually did it, or the surprise would have killed us both. We plumbed the new sink and dishwasher with pex (cross-linked polyethylene tubing). We've got a few rooms to do over the next couple of years, so we bought a crimper ($100!!) Pex goes together so easily and so cleanly, I'm going to replace the whole plumbing system with it!! Since the Ikea cabinets are floating furniture, I decided that I should do something special with the drain pipe in case we ever need to move the cabinets. The basement pipe comes up through the floor, and a rubber coupler connects the sink pipe to it. The pex tubing also is connected to a couple of disconnects, so we can very easily yank the sink out in case we need to get back there (and we will, when the new flooring goes in) Also, around this time, we got our first zuchinni of the summer! It was MASSIVE. There's a photo of my giant zuchinni down here... V V V

For the past two Halloweens, we have had no front porch light. Instead of a porch light, we had to run an extension cord out the window or out the door to power a floor lamp.

Why no porch light? Well, when the house was first wired, there were three switches in the living room.

On one wall:
* One switch for the living room light
On the other wall:
* One switch for the DINING room ceiling light
* Another switch for the PORCH light.

It was just a bit odd to work the switches in one room to control the lights in another room. I also was tired of having to walk all the way across the living room to get to the single switch.

So one day, I decided to give the living room two switches, the dining room it's own switch IN the dining room, and also move the front porch switch next to the front door.

In the first operation, I successfully double-switched the living room. It involved a lot of contortion and grunting in the basement to get the wires where I wanted them, but it was successful. The next step was to get the dining room switched in the dining room. That also took some time, and involved a 20 foot long drill bit I constructed from threaded rod. :o
But the lowly front porch light never got wired up, because it has a very convoluted wiring path, and my frustration limit for electrical work is about 10 hours a year. :P

So last night, I finally started on that damned porch light.
I punched a few exploratory holes into the wall above the switch and the front door, trying to find a suitable path to the existing fixture in the porch ceiling. After all that messy plaster destruction, I gave up and managed to install a new WALL-MOUNTED porch light, directly above the light switch! It's in the same stud bay, so no need to drill through studs!

When I hooked up the dining light almost two years ago, power came up from the basement to the switch, then down to the basement again where it then ran off to some nether region of the house and snaked it's way to above the dining room. This worked fine when there was a single switch in the box, but with two switches, I was left without a dedicated neutral wire! If I had wired it up on the existing cable, BOTH switches would have switched the dining room light, but one of them would turn on both lights! Oddly convenient, but unacceptable.

What I did is to use the old 2-conductor wire as a fish tape to pull a new 3-conductor wire with a dedicated hot and neutral, and a red wire for the dining room switched hot. Wheew! Nothing like a bit of problem solving.

Now, what to do about those big holes in the wall?