pitter patter on the keyboard

For obvious reasons I didn’t like the stock fixtures in my bedroom:

Or my bathroom:

Because crappy fixtures take all the swank out of X10 dimmers.

We can see there was some buggery in here to get the bathroom fan running in series with the light (which I fixed the other day). The box is also being used as a junction box for a run of Romex I’m not clear on the purpose of. That’s fine, everything is safely capped and I don’t feel like being a hero today.

Most fixtures and chandeliers have a bracket which is installed in the electrical box. Once it is loosely secured pull the leads from the new lamp through the hole in the middle (which I didn’t do here, they run flush along  the top anyway). Use the ground wire to secure the lamp to the box/bracket since it needs to come into contact with the box anyway, now you are free to use both hands to connect the hot and neutral.

Fixtures that hold a diffuser from the bottom use a standard thread and bolt size.

Be careful not to tighten the nut too tightly, an over-tightened glass fixture will explode at random. Finger tight is too tight.

The box in the bedroom is much tidier, despite missing a screw.

Now my ceilings don’t looks so much like shit ^.^

The last goon who lived here ripped the surface-mount toilet paper roll holder out of the wall.

These holes are easily cleaned and filled in with spackling paste. Cut any of the paper fluff from around the edges of the holes at an angle so that the hole is tapered inwards.

Unfortunately, bigger holes require layering.

And more layering.

Once you have a slight bulge above the surface of the wall sand it down smooth. I didn’t know at the time I would be getting a recessed holder, which would have saved me a lot of time filling in the larger hole. Since it’s the uglist of the two it’s the one to go.

I measured 5.25 inches on a carpenter’s level and used a dry-erase marker to plot my cut. It would have been a good idea to put a screw in the middle when I started cutting so I could cut straight without losing the hunk of drywall.

This holder has a bracket which clamps to the drywall. It may take some fiddling to get it mounted but it is important to secure it to the faceplate before mounting or you risk losing it in the wall.

Nice and shiny. If someone rips THIS holder out of the wall they’ll be taking the whole gypsum board with it.

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…