There should have been receptacles on the fireplace wall even in 1974. I can almost bet that someone cut them out (probably disabling the one upstairs in the process), when they did that brick work (I can almost bet it was done after the fact).

Believe me I've seen people do dumb things in renos. The house that I was living with they didn't remove the receptacles, but they had to beef up the structure under the fireplace (it was added after the fact) and rather than running the wires right, they just crammed more floor joists under the wires.

You might come down from above if you can figure out what is going on there, or you can likely come around from the side. Drywall is easy to repair. Is that real brick or some sort of veneer? What's on the outside of that wall.

Ron- I am trying to determine if it is a veneer or not. I think it is a veneer. The bricks are too perfect. I might take some on the paneling off and look behind the wall to see what I find. The outside of the wall is the chimney and siding. I only have one outlet on the outside of the house and that is on the back side. This area is the side of the house.

This house is very confusing. It took us weeks to figure out what should have been a simple wiring problem. Whoever wired this house did a bang up job.

Greg- I am in Cleveland and my house is the only house ive seen with this metal conduit throughout.

What do you mean when you say "open every box and check connection" what box?

in my hallway, outside of the bedroom with the non-working outlet is the hallway. There are 2 light switches and another at the bottom of the steps. I can turn the light on at light switch one, and turn it off at light switch 2 or 3. But if I turn it off at 2 or 3, I cannot turn it back on at switch one, I can ONLY turn it back on wherever I turned it off. It drives me crazy. I wonder if this weird wiring has any affect on the bad outlet? (I know almost nothing about this stuff)

By "every box" I mean every receptacle box, every switch box, every light fixture box.

Sometimes you can guess which boxes are downstream and upstream of a receptacle (eg. they are on the same wall) but it's not always the case. And sometimes previous owners have done some pretty crazy things.

I'd say the odds are that it isn't just a loose connection. Someone did something and abandoned the wiring to that outlet. But that's just a guess.

Regarding your multiple switches, providing it was ever working correctly, someone at some point may have replaced a switch with the wrong type and miswired it. Or maybe there's a faulty switch. Or then again, maybe it was never wired properly to begin with and it is what it is.

If you'd like to TRY debugging that, the first step is to open up each switch box and let us know exactly what is coming into each box and how it's attached to each switch. Pictures can be extremely helpful.

If you turn switch 1 on, can you control the light (both on and off) from 2 AND 3?

if yes, #1 controls the hot line to #2 (or #3) and #2 and #3 are wired for 3-way.

I agree with Ron about that wall. There should be 1 if not two outlets on that wall.

no- If I turn on switch 1, and turn the light off at switch 2, i cannot turn the light back on at switch 1 or 3. I have to turn it back on at the switch i used to turn it off-switch 2.

All of the switches will turn it off. But only the switch I used to turn it off will turn it back on.

so if i turn it on upstairs and then turn it off downstairs, when im back upstairs I cannot turn it on. I have to go all the way back down to turn it on.

Rons theory makes a lot of sense- we are going to remove some of the paneling this evening and see what we find.

We removed a panel and found drywall! There was a an area of no drywall above the fireplace opening so we're able to see what was behind the drywall...just the exterior wall. Obviously there are studs on this wall in order to hang the drywall above. We didn't get a chance to look and see if there was any electrical work but will remove another panel this weekend and check it out. Seeing the exterior wall so close to the drywall makes me think the brick is just a veneer. I took a good look at the brick and it is not stacked together with mortar. Looks more like a big brick stamp was used on sheets in concrete.

We did find a pretty impressive bee hive and honeycomb in the wall.