One of the "Bosses" Christmas presents was, yours truly, to install LED recessed lights in
the TV room. Currently there is a floor lamp and a ceiling fan with bulb.
Luckily there is a large crawl space above the room so I can fit my "large frame" above the ceiling
and do the wiring with ease. The only issue was adding a switch with dimmer.
On the wall there is an existing 3-way switch and a single pole for the fan on-off.
I was hoping to add a switch next to those and easy-peasy, all done.
As with any project, the Gods of crappy construction framing were out to get me.
For the love of me I couldn't get the snake to go from either direction.
Tried from the wall switch opening up to the attic, nope.
Went up in the attic, into the crawl space and tried feeding down, nope.
So I had to dismantle the original switches and open the hole to see wtf was going on.
This picture below is what I had after an hour of notes and pictures and wiring diagrams.
I double checked every wire multiple times before I loosened any screws.
2ea 12-3 wires and 2ea 12-2 wires coming into the box. I had to dismantle the switches and
rip out the old box so I could get a look up the wall to see what I was up against.
There was blocking and strapping in the way so I had to do some oscillator saw and chisel work with
out making a huge mess. I finally got the snake to go from the attic down to the opening.
After pulling the wire, I replaced the two original switches with new ones and a new 2 Gang box.
Wired it up, stood by as the "Boss" switched on the breaker, and , voila! It all worked.
I mounted the new switch next to the original one and completed the connections in the crawl space.
Again, the "Boss" turned on the breaker and they worked. Mission Accomplished.
Working on it as time allowed I bet I had 8-10 hours. Longer than I thought it would take.
Plus some Home Depot runs in between everything else.
The "Boss" is happy so all is good. 😊
