We had an electrician out for a few hours this morning to replace the old knob-and-tube wiring powering the wall sconces in our dining room and wire them to the light switches for the room (rather than having them only switched at the light fixture).

New Junction Boxes for the Sconces

New Junction Boxes for the Sconces

The job turned out to be a little more complicated than we expected due to a portion of the window framing extending into the stud bay where the new wire was being fished from the basement, so we wound up with a couple more holes in the walls than we expected, but we’re hoping the plasterer will be able to patch and skim coat over them so that they aren’t noticeable when he’s done.

A couple extra holes in the wall ...

A couple extra holes in the wall ...

Even after this, we still have some knob-and-tube wiring in the dining room that we’re probably not going to replace, which powers the chandelier.  The ceiling is in such great condition that we don’t want to tear into it to run new electrical, so we’ll just have to live with not being able to replace all of the knob-and-tube in the room.  There’s also knob-and-tube running up from the basement to supply power to the light switch.  We are planning to have that run replaced when the electrician comes back on Friday to do some work by the pool.  Once that’s done, we’ll be one step closer to having all of the knob-and-tube in the house updated – we think all that’s left is just a couple of outlets in the living room and a few light fixtures on the main floor.

For the dining room sconces, we’re planning to reinstall the same ones we took down since we believe they’re original to the house and match the chandelier.  We dropped them off today at a lamp & shade store to have them re-wired (and hopefully shined up a bit).  They think it’ll only take them a week or so to get them back to us.  We’re excited to get them installed again and actually be able to use them more now that they’re switched with the rest of the lights in the room.

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