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Electrical Wiring

Changing from one bathroom light fixture to two

7 years ago

I have an old 1970s light fixture with a central junction box and two lights hanging on chains on each side of the mete I have an old 1970s light fixture with a central junction box and two lights hanging on chains on each side of the mirritating. I would like to replace this with two wall sconces on each side of the mirror, and they would have their own junction boxes.

I would like to know how I would need to go about extending new wire to these wall sconces, and removing or hiding The old junction box in the wall. Thanks for any help!

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Comments (4)

Ron Natalie
7 years ago
Been there...done that. I've moved a central light to two side lights (and oddly due to my wife's redecorating ideas back again). First word: if you have a splice, it needs to remain accessible. So if that box still has a live connection in it, you need to leave a cover plate (though you can paint or otherwise hide it with anything as long as you do not need to disturb the "finished surface" to get to it).

The first thing to do is see if you can find where the wires run now. In my case I had the good fortune of having an accessible attic above and was able to pull the wire from the central box up and then fish it down to the closer of the two wall sconce locations. I then ran a wire from there to the other location. It wasn't necessary to cut any holes larger than the box size for the new sconces. Since the old box no longer had any wiring in it, I could cover it over with wall patch.

If you're not so lucky, you'll probably need to be cutting into the wall to find and relocate the wiring. If we're talking drywall, this isn't a big thing. I've spent more time cutting and patching drywall over my life than I care to think about. You may wish or need to remove the mirror. Hopefully it's mounted reasonably rather than being glued to the wall (in the latter case you'll have a lot of drywall to replace :)).
ranger481vs
Original Author
7 years ago
OK, thanks much for the details. That all makes sense, and I have easy access to the attic above this bathroom, So should not present much of a challenge to get new wiring installeded
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Jamie Person
2 years ago
Oh my gosh, I have spent hours looking for a fixture just like this! You don't still have it, do you?
Kelly KW
2 years ago
I’ll have a similar one available from a reno fairly soon. The globes aren’t textured though.

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