pitter patter on the keyboard

One of the bathroom fans in my new pad was installed by the same Joe Handyman that brought you electrical tape on a wall switch and the decorative phone jack.

Not only is the fan wired in series with the light switch, the switch is screwed into the drywall and the neutral is running up the outside of the wall!

Through a giant, ugly, silicone-plugged hole and into the bathroom:

Connected to the fan with a thin twist of electrical tape!

I cut a hole in the drywall above the switches to help me run the cable around the stud to the right of the door:

When cutting a hole you intend to patch over later make an angled incision in the same fashion one would the top of a jack-o-lantern, such that the wedge can be re-seated with spackling paste without falling through.

North American electrical codes call for at least 14-gague non-metallic sheathed wire for 15A circuits, commonly referred to by the trademark Romex.

The sides of most single-gang electrical boxes can be unscrewed and removed so that two or more boxes can be joined together.

Make sure all of your grounds are securely connected to the electrical box and the neutrals have been connected and capped. I’ve connected a WS12A X10 remote control dimmer and a regular decorator-style toggle switch for the fan.

If you are installing remodelling or “old-work” boxes such as these (you can tell the difference by the tabs on the top and bottom for mounting on the surface of drywall) cut the drywall neatly around it so that it fits snugly in the wall. You can see from the first image that this hole was already made too high to accommodate the original old-work box which was recessed (without removing the tabs) and screwed into the door frame stud like a new-work box; while undesirable this shouldn’t be too much of a problem since the faceplate will cover the gap and the electrical box can be sufficiently secured with the bottom tabs alone.

I don’t recommend mounting new-work boxes until you have a faceplate handy since drywall will not tolerate minor adjustments in screw positions.

Now spackle and re-seat any plugs you’ve removed from the wall. I used Poly Filla Big, a 2 inch putty knife and a damp J-cloth to patch this hole. Simply sand, level and paint once the spackling has set to make it disappear. The hard part will be hiding all that silicone numbnuts left me…

This is more of an anecdote than a tutorial since I threw it together with what was handy and wouldn’t endorse this kind of work on-site.

I love moving. Broken back, head-to-toe agony and thousands of dollars vaporized aside – it gives me an opportunity to put new holes in walls and try to make it look as though the rent is a little higher than it actually is.

So, when I saw this ugliness it had to go immediately.

I opened it up and was a little surprised to see….

I removed the box and found the wire connected to…

Am I balls-trippin’  or did I discover the first decorative phone jack ever? I could understand if it was used to store drugs, but being painted over this is unlikely.

I don’t even need cat5 and a phone line in that room but this whole thing started consuming all the idle cycles of my brain. What the hell was that phone jack doing there? Who put it there? Why? Just what were these savages trying to prove?!

Forunately (?) there was also an inexplicable empty hole in the wall near where the jack had been.

Note that a lot of these 8P8C wall-plate/surface box modules do not follow the colour code as though you were crimping a connector. Follow the guide provided on the module for the way the other end is wired.

Apparently it is politically correct to use T-568A these days but the industry (including manufacturers of prefab cables) still seems to prefer B. Personally, I have always wired for B on straight-throughs.

Cut the drywall such that the module will pass into it. I should note here that if you want to save on wire the phone line can be spliced into the blue or brown pairs, but it’s always nicer to run both cables if you can.

Ideally we would be using a dual-port faceplate instead but I had a surface-mount RJ11 jack handy and went for it. I used a filing bit on my drill to make a little gap for the phone wire to come out, otherwise the faceplate won’t rest flat against the wall and one risks blowing out the threads in the drywall (easily fixed and better done by tapping in anchors and re-screwing, mind you). It would also be a good idea to put a knot in the line inside the box; however with the faceplate and a dozen staples holding it snug I don’t see it being much of an issue.

Ta-da! All better. :)