Attic Electrical - Just adding a switch....

We have a foreign exchange student coming to stay with us for two weeks late in March (around J's B-Day) and we plan to have her stay in the extra room upstairs. Until now, the only light in this room was a pull chain in the center of the room. Well, when it's dark, it's kinda hard to find so we decided to put in a switch at the bottom of the stairs. Nice 3-way switch so you can turn on the light from the top and bottom of the stairs. Easy, right...?

Well not so much when your house is 87 years old with knob and tube wiring. If you don't know much about knob and tube consider yourself lucky, as it's pretty scary stuff. This particular circuit just happens to run up the south wall all the way to the peak of the attic, across the entire house and down the the outlet under the window. Along the way it somehow picks up the ceiling lights/fans in D's room, the bathroom, the hall, our room and the living room. We're not done yet... it also has the two outlets on the mantle (where our stereo is plugged in) and the only two outlets upstairs - well, that's a bit much - OY!


The logical starting point is the 2 foot wide section in the center of the ceiling. This was a real treat. Taking off the panels and exposing 50+ year old insulation. Yuck. BTW you should never, absolutely ever, insulate over knob and tube wiring.

I think J was getting a bit nervous when she saw the ceiling panels removed. One leg of the knob and tube wiring went to the left of the window and the other to the right so I decided that I had to expose the end wall too. Quite a mess!

What's left of an outlet that really didn't work anyway. See what I mean - scary....

D wanted to help during the reconstruction phase. She helped install trim, wire up the outlets and the dimmer switch and helped clean up a bit. She learned some basic home wiring and safety to boot!