what's going on my friends this is dustin stelzer electricianu
uh this video i got to go up to my parents house up in minnesota because
they were doing a remodel and they needed some help with the electrical
so i got a call from the folks they're in the middle of a kitchen remodel so they
completely ripped through their entire kitchen they took out an old bathroom
and uh turned the the whole kitchen into a much larger kitchen they wanted to put an island
and everything so uh my old man's been doing you know handyman kind of stuff his entire life
so he's just doing everything himself whether having the cabinets built by my uncle my whole
family is like construction folks but once my dad got everything open started removing you know
walls taking drywall off he realized like holy crap this is a 120 year old house
so there's eras of wiring and he didn't know what went where and so instead of like trying
to do this over the phone through facetime i was like bro why don't i just fly up there
and and help you and just do it all in like a day and figure it all out so that's what i did
so when i got there the first thing that i noticed there was wires everywhere um pretty common for
a remodel really at least you know he left all of the devices and everything where they were they're
still living in this house so they still needed switches and everything receptacles to work so
uh the two main problems the two you know big things that needed to be solved were uh right at
the front door they had a whole bunch of switches i think they had like four to six different
switches controlling a bunch of different things there's like one leg that went out to the garage
and it was on a three-way but it was really wired in a weird way that we couldn't trace um and then
there was some receptacles on the other side so there was a half wall that got removed on the
uh opposite side of the kitchen so like a you know two foot wall essentially so there's a whole bunch
of wires hanging down there so we had to figure out how to reroute them this is a four-story house
basement three stories um and so everything that's run is run like in between floors so we
were trying to just minimize the amount of drywall that we had to remove so we just didn't have to
do a whole bunch of extra work so the biggest challenge was just trying to figure out where
all these conductors went if i cut them could i like reroute them to somewhere to kind of like
hide a joint in a can or you know do whatever we could because we didn't want to just completely
try to rip out conductors and then re-run them and cut a whole bunch of drywall so none of this
is really all that difficult it's just that these two projects are kind of a pain in the
butt of like trying to figure out how we can rerun things and figure out where they go to begin with
i don't see anything going that way either i wonder if there is a plug outside maybe
let's see now that's where our meter is though but i don't see anything out here
that there would be a plug for as i started uh opening everything up i wanted to label everything
that i was finding so that's the first thing that i do in a remodel is start labeling everything
that i do know start trying to take the things out that are unnecessary that i can guarantee that i
know what they are and that way the things that i don't know i can kind of leave that till the end
and i can start tracing things individually so anytime you get to a remodel and you got wires
hanging out everywhere it can be kind of stressful looking at the whole thing as a whole so you kind
of have to just dive into one thing and try to find all your knowns first that way it minimizes
the unknowns and you can go through and find them individually so the first thing that i did is i
started at the switches i started taking all of that stuff apart figuring out where each leg went
and my method of doing it as i kept everything live and that way i had a live conductor so when
i actually touched my legs i could see actual individual lights turning on now i am a master
electrician i have experience i'm okay working on this live and using this as a testing method
if you don't have experience obviously don't be working live like always take do whatever you can
to like minimize risk as much as possible go turn things off and turn things on when you need them
but let's all be honest in remodels you're constantly going and turning things on turning
them off turn them on trying to figure out what things are so it's a pretty common practice
to be able to turn things live test a few things go turn things off then once i got everything at
these switch locations figured out there were a couple of travelers that i couldn't figure out so
i went down in the basement and their basement has a grid ceiling this is the craziest thing
um i guess just old houses they used to do this they put grid ceilings in the basements and when
you pop one of those tiles open there's there is nothing but craziness from years and years
of people just kind of like putting random stuff in there and i found conductors that were just
coiled up stripped out left on top of the grid live so there was a whole bunch of craziness that
i found but trying to trace these travelers it was like they took this route to go all the way around
the house above other ceilings through walls and then outside to get out to the garage for this
three-way so i spent a little bit of time just like scratching my head on where things went but
overall i pretty much got all of it figured out in a very quick amount of time the problem then
was some of the conductors were not long enough to really do anything with and we didn't want to
start cutting through the ceiling my dad was trying to save as much of the drywall as
possible just so he didn't have to spend all that time redoing it plus all of the can lights were
already cut in and everything so just cutting more would have been even more of a pain in the butt
um so i was like alright well your options are since i can't really get to any of these recessed
cans to be able to fish a conductor up there to make joints in one of the cans we're just gonna
have to put a junction box somewhere weird it was either put a junction box somewhere weird
and just put a blank plate on it and you'll you know you'll see it we can cover it up with
a smoke detector or we could put a clock over it or something like that but it's like it's either
that or we take the rest of the ceiling down or you know cut like a huge patch which means
eventually he's going to have to take the rest of the ceiling down and redo it all so they were
just like nah let's just put some junction boxes above the doors doesn't really matter
so once i got all of the switches licked and i re-ran all of the wires and kind of
made as much of it work as possible i got that side done then i moved over to the opposite
side where we had that half wall with all the conductors hanging out of it so same thing i
had to figure out what was what i knew right below this wall there was a panel an old cutler hammer
panel but there was a few of these conductors that were coming up that were travelers that either
went from one level to another level or they were home runs that were feeding the kitchen or they
were feeding rooms upstairs and i know they were feeding rooms upstairs because my mom was on a
zoom call working and i kept disconnecting stuff and then i would hear her be like what is that
and so i would just completely cut off and relax i'm like sorry mom uh so i figured out
what was what um by shutting my mom's ability to work off we cut the power off oh no charlie
you can't cut the power off we got zoom calls to be on
you come home baby are you gonna be my little electricity puppy but i figured out that
the majority of the conductors that were going up there were home runs that were feeding either
the kitchen or they were feeding the next um the next level the next story of the house
there were a couple that were just like receptacles there was a traveler that i
think went from one floor to another um so some of that stuff was like crap i can't just cut this and
hide this anywhere i'm gonna have to completely refeed this put some junction boxes down in the
grid ceiling below and so that's what i started to do i mounted some boxes in the grid
the the travelers i had to cut and actually make joints inside of this thing and pull them out
and re-feed them re-route them all the way around this whole doorway same thing with the home runs
most of the home runs were short so i ended up having to pull those old home runs out and
re-feed with new home runs up on the left-hand side of this doorway and then up over the top
there was one home run that i couldn't do anything with it was just too short and again
we had a conductor that was like disappearing over a ceiling in another room and it's like
there's no point in cutting all that sheetrock if you're fine just putting the junction box up here
then we can do that and so that's what we decided to do so after i got everything rerun everything
was re-identified we put new switches and new locations new receptacles in new locations last
thing i had to do is put new devices in so being that my parents are still living in the house
we i had to make it as safe as possible so i still wanted to put in all the devices in every single
one of the boxes so they could still live and plug the refrigerator in and still use all the lights
and not get shocked you know so i definitely put plates over the top of everything as well
but that was that and so this is the what it looks like finished they got a whole bunch of new
drywall put up new paint my uncle made a whole set of cabinets like by hand he does this for a living
he does outstanding work so all the cabinets that you're seeing right now all of that is
custom work that my uncle did the island as well and they got new countertops put on everything
and i think it looks light years better than it did before now there's a couple of things that
i probably would have done differently had this been my house if it was my house i probably would
have just gone ahead and ripped out the ceiling redone all the can lights because the can lights
are just kind of up there where they are there's not like a pattern to them really they were just
using the existing lighting so i probably would have just sacrificed that whole ceiling that way
i wouldn't have had to put those junction boxes up there i mean you're out another like what
four to six pieces of drywall you know like sheets of drywall you're already going to be mudding and
spraying taping floating all that stuff so like i probably would have just done the entire ceiling
if it were my house that way it will allow me to go do all of the lighting how it is laid out with
the new layout of the kitchen so i probably would have redone all the lighting as well uh in the
ceiling and then i probably would have added some accents right like this is a really nice kitchen
now all these beautiful cabinets i probably would have put switched under cabinet lighting that way
you know like under your upper cabinets you've got some light that shines down on these nice
countertops i think under cabinet lighting in a kitchen that has like really nice cabinetry
just looks amazing so that's definitely something i probably would have done if it was my house
one more thing did you know that we have continuing education yes we're
approved in a whole bunch of different states you can go to electrician you
click on the little bar on the right go to continuing education and we have a bunch of
different states we have more states that we're adding so if you don't see your state
soon enough i promise we will have it but it's dope you just get to watch videos of me doing
this and you get credit for it so check the link out below hope to see you in class so
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