[Red Squirrel]

Hi,

I just found this forum while searching for stuff on google and thought I'd join as I will probably be wanting to learn lot of DIY type work as I just bought a house. I'm getting lot of stuff done professionally but I still want to tackle some of it myself for the experience and to save $$$.

Anyway, on to my question.
First starting with pics

The first switch is a double, one switch for outside and one for entrance (door is just behind me taking pic of that wall). The wire seems to come from the top so I guess it's fed through the attic and I'm guessing there may be a junction box there that I can work from but not sure.

The second pic is just on the other side of that wall and it's the kitchen light.

I want to combine them all into one 3-switch spot so the kitchen one is just going to be flipped over, the other two moved across. It's the two that will be tricky because of the studs. What is best way to do a move like this? Should I rerun from the attic or is there an easier way?

If I have enough slack I can drill through the stud and pass the wire, but I doubt there will be enough.

I also thought of just running new wire from the old spot and cover the old box, but that's not really a good way of doing things and may even be against code.

 

[kbsparky]

How many wires are in that double switch box, and do they all run up to the attic? It may be a simple matter of pulling the wires up in the attic, mounting a splice box, and extending the lines down to the new switch location.

As for the switch behind the side of the fridge, simply remove the nails from the box, loosen the clamp that holds the wire into the box, and carefully remove the box. Sometimes I just let the old box fall into the wall cavity. :whistling2:

If you cut your 3-gang hole on the opposite side, the wire should easily be installed into the new box facing the other way.

 

[Red Squirrel]

There's just one wire that goes to the double, and it has 3 wires in it + the ground. If there actually is slack then it should be easy as I can drill through the stud to feed it to the new location, but otherwise not too sure what to do. (there's at least one stud between the double and where I want to put it)

For the single it should be easy enough but I may have to tear part of the drywall. The box was nailed in sideways before the drywall was applied. I can always just cut the nail away too... Then just need to flip the box to the new side after cutting my hole. The boxes look like the modular type so I can just unscrew the sides and then combine the single and double to make a 3.

Oh and most of the wiring seems to be paper insulated with a tarish substance. Should I be replacing all of these wires? the small wires inside look like normal modern wires though, it's just the main cable that is not using standard insulation. Even my 240v oven plug uses such cabling (but bigger).