Agreed. Before you start down the path for home automation, explore adding wiring as the latter option is certainly more practical and cheaper. Aside from crawling around, you need to fish the wire through the walls which is not too difficult. Btw, home automation does work and could be very useful. Unfortunately there are a number of competing standards which are incompatible with each other. X-10/ Insteon Z-Wave ZigBee Lutron's Clear Connect / RadioRA X-10 is quite funky - sometimes does not work, largely supplanted by Insteon. Z-Wave is available from GE, Leviton and some other manufacturers. ZigBee is an IEEE standard which is starting to see some traction. Lutron's Clear Connect is a proprietary solution which works today with Lutron's wireless devices. I think that ZigBee (integrated with WiFi) could be the eventual winner, but that would take a number of years.

Sure, the switch over switch idea could work, but is not optimal (which is why I didn't include it in my original post as a possible solution). Demoing the existing box in order to install an old work box with one more gang space could be a pain, especially if the original installer stapled the romex/bx tight (close to box with no slack). I was hoping there was a "trick" to notching out the drywall next to the existing box and installing an old work box while using a single cover plate. Since everyone says it won't work, I'm glad I asked before trying it in the field. BTW, how are you going to cut those 2 nails with a keyhole saw? You can't forget the sawzall.

I would try looking at the wires running to the wall switches, to see if the colors match the ceiling wire colors. I would say the Red and white. You need a voltage probe or multimeter to see if the red is actually the HOT side (from a light switch when switched on). Looks like the light to the chandelier is also on a circuit that feeds other lights or outlets. I went through this a couple months ago, when I lost power to half my house due to old wiring at the fixture. Ran new cable to the light fixture, and connected it all back together again, it did take a couple trys to get it working.

Have you actually checked to see what the fuel consumption would be for the load? While your best efficiency is typically obtained when the generator is running at close to it's rated capacity, typically they aren't that far off when running lesser loads. Running two generators on one transfer switch will not work. They won't be running synchronized and havoc will result from possibly damaging your transfer switch or loads to killing the generators. Option 3 will certainly work. Nothing will be connected to both generators under that scenario.