How the Attic and Crawlspace became my best friends

So.... This is a long overdue post. However, I'm going to blame it partially on how long it took me to actually DO the job, and being distracted by the excitement of adding a member to my family! Welcome to the world, Nephew Jacob!

Originally, the three-way switch in the dining room didn't work correctly. The secondary light switch only worked when the primary was in the "On" position. And there were a ton of wires coming into the box that seemed completely unnecessary. Which meant, of course, that I was going to try to get rid of the unnecessary wires and fix the three-way switch.

However, getting the old wires to reach two feet further over proved somewhat of a challenge. I would crawl under the house and pull free the wire staples, and barb would pull up the extra cord. "OK!" was what I was always going for, but "Still not enough!" was what I got most of the time.

Finally, we got the lengths all correct, and everything pulled into the box.

I connected everything up the way I diagrammed it and....

NOTHING! Oh nuts! What in the world was going on?!?!?!?! No matter how I wired the switches, I couldn't get the kitchen light to turn on. At all. And though the back porch light would turn on, the secondary three-way switch next to it wouldn't work at all. UGH!

I thus began dialoging with the one person I knew could help me: My dad! He was a GREAT help! We diagrammed the box and had LONG conversations while I *tried* not to electrocute myself.

After many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many trips to both the attic and the crawl space, I started to get it. Long story short, (because boy was it a long story...) I had cut the cord to the KITCHEN light (not the dining light) and now the kitchen light cord was just dangling out there unconnected to anything. And I had disconnected the three-way switch to the dining room.

On the last night, I was so frustrated, because everything now worked, except that every time I flipped the secondary three-way switch, the circuit breaker would flip. I had a short somewhere, and it was the only thing standing in my way. I was so close, but I had school in the morning (oh no!) and I knew I had to get this done!

In my frustration of needing to go to bed, I sat down and wrote dad an email, finishing with:

"Proposed Solution:

I need to remove the white from the 3-way and attach the black which is by-passing the switch, as well as attach the light's black to the switch. This would also allow the back porch line to NOT be split.

Thoughts?"

As I was getting ready to go to bed, a thought struck me: If that was the right answer, I could get it done right NOW in about three minutes, and it would be DONE!

So I raced back into the dining room (I didn't even need to go back down to the crawl space or up to the attic!!!) and started re-wiring. (Don't worry, I remembered to turn the electricity off first). Then the moment of truth came: (Well... it was actually about the 17th moment of truth in the saga, but we'll forget that for now...) AND IT WORKED!

I did a SERIOUS happy dance. In fact, it was more like one of those end-zone dances that the NFL has banned. I think I may have scarred Java for life. She turned tail and ran when I started busting a move.

It was done! All the electricity worked! I did it! I even fixed it to a better state then it was originally. I rock! (With dad's help, that is...)

Shout out to Joanne too! The book you got me for my birthday helped me understand what all the wires DO and which parts of the switch feed what kind of electricity.

...and then later, we discovered I forgot to attach the wire for the doorbells. More on that later.