Need some old work resi help

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JosephSpike
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Need some old work resi help

Post by JosephSpike » Thu Mar 31, 2011 12:38 pm

Ok I'm a commercial electrician, I have done my fair share of new work resi, and new and old work commercial, but not a whole lot of old work resi. Basically customer has a split entry, wants recessed lights installed in living room and 3 bedrooms. House is about 25 years old, living room currently has no switched light or receptacle, bedrooms have single poles controlling top halves of one receptacle in each room. The attic above three bedrooms and living room is unfinished. No problem at all installing the cans, its the switches. Now here's my dilema.

In living room customer wants the new recessed controlled by a switch at the top of the stairs beside a two gang that has a threeway for the hallway light and threeway for the stair well light, but essentially wants to make that 2 gang box a threegang with all switches being under one threegang plate, and then in bedrooms adding single pole dimmers to control the recessed beside the single poles controlling the receptacles essentially making those two gang boxes.

Now in order to do this I obviously have to find the side of the box that is not against the stud, and my plan is to cut in an old work beside the boxes and then cover with the new 2 gang plates in the bedrooms and three gang for the living room. Is this the only way to accomplish this/ is it legal. Sorry if this seems like a diy question but its not.

Obviously I'm sure I'll have 2 pains the the ***, 1.) finding the side of the boxes not nailed to a stud and 2.) I'm 95% sure the treeways at the top of the stairs will be the load sides.

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