It's electric!

So after living with some well intentioned but incorrect wiring for nearly seven months, I decided to tackle the problems. It appears as though (almost) all of the wires had been run correctly. Curiously, the two "three-way" branch circuits that had been bothering us were just hooked up to the switches incorrectly. Thank you Internet! The one juggle was that the power for one of the three ways also passed through a half-switched outlet. 

That never worked. So I dug in and worked my way through the maze of wires. I figured out by process of elimination which one was the line in, and which others were meant to control theswitch-ability  of the outlet.

Here is the mess at the switch box, where one switch is a leg that controls one half of the nearby outlet, and the other is one of two three way switches controlling the mudroom light.

I worked at it for hours, running to the basement to flip breakers on and off (the same circuit controls the ceiling light in the kitchen and the fan/light over the Island). When I nearly had it figured out, but not quite, Sarah made a perfectly simple suggestion:

All that had been missing was a neutral (white wire) connecting the feed to the switch box. Well, really, the neutral had run to the switch box, letting the mudroom light function in one orientation, but the switch leg had been omitted for the outlet. After wiring the switch leg, I couldn't get the mudroom light to work, and in came Sarah's solution as a means of testing a theory.

I opened up the wall, fed a new wire between the boxes, (fish tape hanging out of the stud bay on the right) and we are nearly back in business. 

Finally, we won't have to worry about which switch controls the mudroom light! Before, one switch had to stay in one position for the other to have any control. Now, either switch will work, anytime. As a bonus, we have a switched outlet into which we can plug a lamp, ending the confusion of the heretofore useless switch! 

As the same non-functioning three way situation existed in our stairwell, I tackled that with no new holes in the wall! It seems as though all the wires were run, and maybe an apprentice came through (?) and took a swing at the three way wiring and missed. I'm surprised the lights ever worked at all! 

I'll just mud that back up, and no one loses!

So much with which to catch our faithful readers up! For now,

1love

Andy