Post 35: Hiding Electrical Wires

During our last project, we discovered that there were quite a few electrical wires hiding in our kitchen furdowns.

In order to put drywall up (without hitting the wires with a nail), we needed to conceal the wires in the walls and behind the studs.  This would be really simple if at least one end of the wire were free, but, since all of ours were hooked up (you know, bringing power to our home), it was a little more troublesome to hide them.  Here's what we did.

Note: I realize this might be a little boring, so I livened it up with some help from Lucy and Gus.  Enjoy!

Step 1: Decide if the wires are long enough

Huh?  

Since the Romex cables had to reach their destination on either side without the extra space in the furdown, some of them were no longer long enough.

I still need more.

Think: it's a further distance to go around a corner than it is to cut across the middle.  Previously, the Romex was cutting across the middle through the furdown and now we need it to go around inside the wall.

To see if a wire was long enough, we just held it up across any stud it would cross and saw if it had enough length to reach the extra distance.

If it was long enough, this was a simple fix.  We could go straight to step 3.

If it wasn't, there was a little more involved before we could get to that step.  (I didn't measure, but I drew out what this looked like in case you're visual like me!)

Which leads me to step 2.

Step 2: Lengthen the wire

We had quite a few Romex cables that weren't quite long enough, so we had to figure out how to lengthen them.  Luckily, my husband is basically an electrician, so this was no sweat. ;)

(Okay, there may have been a little sweat.)

Before we go into this step, let me tell you what we learned about electrical wires.  When you have a connection point between two wires (basically, where two wires are twisted together to continue the power supply), that connection point has to be accessible.  If this is in the attic/basement, it simply has to be visible, but when there is drywall covering it up (like in our kitchen), there has to be a removable plate in front of it.  My understanding is that this is so if anything goes wrong, you don't have to knock out a bunch of holes in the wall to find and access it (and it signals electricians to know there is an extra connection in the cables).  Here's a picture of where a junction box was used without an outlet.

Prior to working with any of these wires, we turned off the power to our kitchen at the breaker box.  With the power off, it was safe to disconnect the wires and lengthen them.  At this point, we had to decide how to make the fewest connection points.  Each connection requires a junction box, so we wanted to keep those to a minimum.  (I really didn't want a bunch of blank outlet plates on the wall of our newly renovated kitchen.)  Here's how we went about this part:

A. Can the wire be disconnected at the outlet?

Yes

Remember, the wires we are working with all power something in our house, mostly in our kitchen.  Several of them go straight to outlets or switches.  For these, we removed the outlet plate, pulled out the outlet or switch, and disconnected the wire from the back.  Then, we either moved the cable behind the necessary studs and reconnected it, or we lengthened it.

To lengthen the cable, we attached a new length of Romex to the outlet (as much as we needed to make the whole cable long enough) and then connected it to the existing cable in a junction box.

I tried to draw kind of what this looked like so that it would make more since.  (I know, I'm an artist... not!)  Drawing A is essentially what we started with.  The Romex was not long enough to stretch around any studs and was pretty much already taking the shortest path from the power source to the outlet.  Drawing B shows how we detached the existing Romex from the outlet, added a new length of Romex, and then connected the two in a junction box.  

Note: Since we are doing a big "renovation" already, we decided it was okay to take out some of the drywall to access existing junction boxes more easily.  This will all be patched and hidden when we put the room back together.

No

For wires that weren't connected at outlets we could reach (or we didn't know exactly where they led), we cut them with wire cutters and connected the ends to an extension of Romex in a junction box.

B. Connect wires within a junction box

We were fortunate to only have to install one junction box.  Alan was really clever about figuring out how to get everything to connect all in one place -- yay!

Junction boxes have holes at the back corners for wires to feed through.

When two cables meet inside the box, a connection can be made.  To do this, we stripped the outer rubber coating of each wire, twisted them to the matching wire of the extension piece, covered them with a plastic wire connector, and then wrapped them in electrical tape for extra safety/security.

Step 3: Conceal Romex

Don't fall asleep on me.  We're almost done!

Note: This step really worked in tandem with step 2 depending on if it benefited us more to move the wire with a free end.

Once all of the wires were long enough to be concealed in the wall, we had to decide just how to do that.  There were several options.

A. Weave the wire behind the necessary stud(s).

This one is pretty simple.  With one end of the wire disconnected, move it behind any studs that it is in front of and reconnect it at a junction box.

B. Drill holes and weave the wire through the stud(s).

For a wire that wase free at one end, sometimes it was best to drill holes through each of the studs it would cross and feed it through the holes.  Once this was done, we reconnected the wire at a junction box.

C. Conceal the wire behind a cable protector.

This step worked for all wires, even if they weren't disconnected on one end.  The basic idea of this option is to notch out a section of the stud where the cable crosses it, push the cable into the notched-out section, and cover it with a cable protector.  We bought a cool little tool to help us get this job done easily -- a Dremel Multi-Max.

We used the wood cutting blade and cut out sections that could be covered by the cable protectors.

It took about five minutes for each "notch."  

The cable protectors hammer into the stud easily.  We just fed the wires through the notch and hammered the plates into place!

Now everything's hidden and ready for the next step!

Almost everything!!

After all of this, we had an electrician out to install recessed lighting.  Now, instead of one big light in the center of the room, we have great lighting on all sides of the room.

Before:


After:

That is all for our part of the electrical work.  I promise, it's not that scary.

But this is!

(Okay, enough of my dogs.)  See you later for our countertop and backsplash demo!

Post 34: Kitchen Demolition -- Furdowns

Demolition day is here, y'all!  This project is getting real... and fast!  Today we are showing you how we took down our cabinets and removed our furdowns to start creating a more open-concept kitchen.

If you need a refresher, these are some of our plans:

• Removing all furdowns
• Raising the cabinets on the wall
• Opening up the bar for more "open concept" flow

We'd like to move the cabinets up on the wall.  A lot of our stuff (coffee machine, bread basket) don't open all of the way unless you pull them out from underneath the cabinet.  (Also, I can't get utensils out of my crock without hitting the bottom of the upper cabinets!)  We measured several other people's kitchen cabinets and found that ours are about four inches lower than theirs.  Since we wanted to get rid of the furdowns anyways, we thought this was the perfect time to raise the cabinet height.

Here is a reminder of our plans for a more open concept bar area.  (The X'd out area shows what we want to get rid of!)

All refreshed?  Here we go!

Removing Cabinets

In order to get the furdowns off the wall and move the cabinets up a few inches, we needed to unscrew the cabinets from the wall.  I started by removing all of the knobs and pulls from the cabinet doors.

Then, I unloaded the cabinets.  We will be "kitchening" out of our dining room until further notice...  (Anyone up for takeout?)

Finally, we removed all of the doors from the kitchen cabinets.  (This was partially to avoid annoying doors hitting us while we took the cabinets down and partially because we plan on painting them later.)

To keep track of the doors, I made a floorplan and numbered the cabinets with painter's tape.  I'll show you in another post how we numbered the cabinets without painting over them!

With the cabinets unloaded and the doors removed, we were almost ready to take the upper cabinet boxes off the wall.  First, we decided to remove the crown molding since some of it went out past the cabinet box.  See exhibit A.

The molding came off pretty easily with a crowbar and a hammer.

I was careful to label all of the pieces so that we would be sure where they went when we put everything back together.  (I know -- the dust is gross!)

To remove the boxes from the wall, we found the screws at the top/back and lower/back of the cabinet, unscrewed them, and brought the them down.

To bring down the cabinets over the stove, we had to unscrew the vent hood.  (I know you can't tell by this picture, but I really was so excited!  This was going to open up the room so much!)

For boxes we wanted to take down separately, we just unscrewed them from each other at the front sides.

Removing Furdowns

Once the cabinets were off of the wall, it was time to get the furdowns out of the way.

Say... what's a furdown?

Funny you should ask!  I created my own definition on our last project (our half bath).

Furdown: noun /fər-doun/: a section of the ceiling that is dropped lower than the rest of the ceiling, typically to house duct work or fill the gap between the ceiling and cabinetry; similar to soffit.

Here are the furdowns in our kitchen:

The last time we tore out a furdown, we just used a hammer and a crowbar.  After that experience, we decided the right tool was a reciprocating saw, so we invested in one for this project.

To start, we made holes in the drywall with a hammer and pulled down the drywall to see what was behind it.  We didn't want to start sawing into electrical or plumbing by mistake!

With the drywall down and everything exposed, we were able to see where there was electrical that would would need to work around.  Using the reciprocating saw, Alan broke the framework into smaller pieces to pull it down off the wall.

Well... mostly smaller pieces...

With the furdowns removed, our place was a mess!

Fun fact: this was trash day and our trash cans were at the curb waiting to be emptied, so we had to wait to throw all this junk away.  AH!

I think when we heard the trash guys come, I ran to get the bins!

So, the kitchen furdowns are off the wall and the trash if off the floor (and counters and sink)!

Just when we felt like we were on a roll, we opened up the furdown over the windows in our breakfast nook.

Unfortunately, it looked like the beam in the wall was load-bearing, so we decided to cover it back up (rather than possibly pay a bunch of money to get it moved).  So, a slight bummer, but the next part is so good that I don't even care!

Removing the wall

Removing the wall was the best part of the demo in my opinion.  This is what we wanted to open up so that we could extend the bar and have a more open-concept feel to the room.

The wall was similar to the furdowns.  We took the drywall down and then used the reciprocating saw to help remove the framework.  I feel like it REALLY opened up the room.  Not only will we be able to see whoever is sitting at the table, but we can also see out into the back yard!

And... this is our kitchen! TA-DA!!!

Actually, I think YIKES is more like it!!  We've really gotten ourselves into something...  But don't worry.  I have faith that we can get it all back together.  Visit us soon to see how we hide all those pesky wires!

And hey, as my treat to you, I'll leave you with this.  If you're ever feeling bad about your messy house, just remember -- there once was a day when it looked like this at the Sulak's.  You're welcome.