The battle of the lighting fixture..
Sometimes, it sucks to live in an 80-year-old house.
Last weekend, Judson and I were finally victorious over the lighting in our living room. The plan had been to change out the fixture weeks ago. But when we brought down the old fixture, we discovered that not only did we not have the right type of box, but that there only seemed to be about 1/2" clearance between the ceiling and the joist the box was anchored to. Ouch. To make matters worse, when we tried to remove the old box, we didn't notice the armored cable anchors until we had already clipped numerous wires awfully close to the armored cable. It turns out that installed armored cable is practically impossible to cut (given any kind of cutting tools we owned and purchased).
We dealt with the shortened cables by using butt splices to add length; this had the added benefit of removing any old frayed and unreliable cloth insulation (yes, our wiring is so old that the insulation is woven cloth). There's nothing like a few butt splices to bring out your inner Beavis and Butthead. We also established once again that I am the mechanically inclined member of our family. This is reassuring, since I'm the mechanical engineer.
Once we had installed the butt splices and re-established how the wiring worked (there were eight wires--none of which were bare grounding wire; the armored cable conduit stuff provides grounding), we used wire nuts to make everything safe. We tested the butt splices by tugging firmly on them and by bending the wires; then we gave them a little extra insulation by wrapping them with a rather copious wrapping of high-quality electrical tape.
And this is how our living room remained for roughly three weeks. The wires that were hanging down were far too long for a 1/2" ceiling box. We didn't want to cut up the joist to allow for a deeper box. And while side-mounting seemed like it might be an option, we couldn't find an appropriate box and didn't want to have to tear up the whole ceiling.
Last week, something in me snapped, and I decreed that we would have our new fixture installed by Sunday evening.
It worked.
We managed to find a side-mount ceiling fan box whose punch-outs were in the perfect place for our armored cable. It was a spacious 2.5" deep. It was not easy to pry out the nails that held brackets positioning the armored cable in precisely the wrong place, but I got it done. And I didn't fall off the ladder, even though I had numerous close calls. If you're klutzy, you should probably not attempt a task that requires you to use a lever at a level higher than your head while standing on a ladder, especially if you are exhausted from a hard workout earlier in the day. Incredibly, it was even more difficult to screw in the new box. Against the odds, I eventually got the screws started (using a normal screwdriver, no less!), and that proved to be the hardest part. Soon our box was installed, and the cable was hanging down in the perfect orientation. We didn't even have to cut too big an opening in the ceiling.
With the box installed, we decided to check out the fixture and decide whether we needed to patch the ceiling. We didn't! Huzzah!
So we installed the light fixture. It looks great. I'll take a picture as soon as I figure out what's going on with our battery recharger.
People always say that replacing/installing light fixtures is easy. And they're right.
Last weekend, Judson and I were finally victorious over the lighting in our living room. The plan had been to change out the fixture weeks ago. But when we brought down the old fixture, we discovered that not only did we not have the right type of box, but that there only seemed to be about 1/2" clearance between the ceiling and the joist the box was anchored to. Ouch. To make matters worse, when we tried to remove the old box, we didn't notice the armored cable anchors until we had already clipped numerous wires awfully close to the armored cable. It turns out that installed armored cable is practically impossible to cut (given any kind of cutting tools we owned and purchased).
We dealt with the shortened cables by using butt splices to add length; this had the added benefit of removing any old frayed and unreliable cloth insulation (yes, our wiring is so old that the insulation is woven cloth). There's nothing like a few butt splices to bring out your inner Beavis and Butthead. We also established once again that I am the mechanically inclined member of our family. This is reassuring, since I'm the mechanical engineer.
Once we had installed the butt splices and re-established how the wiring worked (there were eight wires--none of which were bare grounding wire; the armored cable conduit stuff provides grounding), we used wire nuts to make everything safe. We tested the butt splices by tugging firmly on them and by bending the wires; then we gave them a little extra insulation by wrapping them with a rather copious wrapping of high-quality electrical tape.
And this is how our living room remained for roughly three weeks. The wires that were hanging down were far too long for a 1/2" ceiling box. We didn't want to cut up the joist to allow for a deeper box. And while side-mounting seemed like it might be an option, we couldn't find an appropriate box and didn't want to have to tear up the whole ceiling.
Last week, something in me snapped, and I decreed that we would have our new fixture installed by Sunday evening.
It worked.
We managed to find a side-mount ceiling fan box whose punch-outs were in the perfect place for our armored cable. It was a spacious 2.5" deep. It was not easy to pry out the nails that held brackets positioning the armored cable in precisely the wrong place, but I got it done. And I didn't fall off the ladder, even though I had numerous close calls. If you're klutzy, you should probably not attempt a task that requires you to use a lever at a level higher than your head while standing on a ladder, especially if you are exhausted from a hard workout earlier in the day. Incredibly, it was even more difficult to screw in the new box. Against the odds, I eventually got the screws started (using a normal screwdriver, no less!), and that proved to be the hardest part. Soon our box was installed, and the cable was hanging down in the perfect orientation. We didn't even have to cut too big an opening in the ceiling.
With the box installed, we decided to check out the fixture and decide whether we needed to patch the ceiling. We didn't! Huzzah!
So we installed the light fixture. It looks great. I'll take a picture as soon as I figure out what's going on with our battery recharger.
People always say that replacing/installing light fixtures is easy. And they're right.
posted by megan at
10:19 PM
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