Two Important Projects in the Kitchen

Disclaimer: This post contains a lot of information about electrical wiring. This is by no means a tutorial that you should follow to wire your own outlets — that should be done working with a professional! I just learned a lot about electricity this weekend and thought it was really cool and wanted to share.

Lest you think I’ve just been resting on my laurels with the kitchen renovation, I promise that’s not so! In the last week we’ve done two really important projects to lay the groundwork for the wall demo in just 2.5 (!!!) weeks.

The first is that we’re getting our building permit, which requires that we submit an engineering drawing of the structural support we plan to put in to replace the wall. Sometimes this is something the contractor will handle directly, but in our case we arranged to do the permit application process ourselves so we also contracted separately with an architect to do the drawing. We found an architect who was well-reviewed on Angie’s List, and he prepared the drawing for us. This work isn’t cheap (it cost us $630, which seems to be about the going rate around here), but for the peace of mind that our house isn’t going to collapse it seems worth it.

He actually put together two options for us. One has a larger beam that would protrude further from the ceiling, but no support column needed:

And the other has a smaller beam that would be almost flush with the ceiling but require a support column at the end of the peninsula.

He prepared both drawings for us and mailed us hard copies with his stamp so we could decide which one we wanted to file with the permit. We thought a lot about it, I called Naomi in for a second opinion, and ultimately we decided to go with the smaller beam plus support column. Even though it could be nice to have the space totally open, we have low ceilings (7′) so we felt like the low beam would look strange and having a column is what we’d been imagining all along anyway (as my mock-up back in January shows).

The other project was some electrical work to prepare the back wall for cabinets. As I’m sure you remember, we removed the buffet and installed a new fridge, and our plan is to build a wall of cabinets.

Before we do that, though, we needed to deal with a few electrical issues. First, we needed to add two new outlets on the wall: one immediately behind the fridge, and one behind where the pantry will go so that we can put a microwave in there. I’m not going to give you a wiring tutorial because obviously you should have a professional do this for you (which we did), but I did learn a ton through the process that I didn’t know before so I figured I would share a little about how adding an outlet works. I was lucky to be working with someone who was willing to teach me and let me help along the way, which was an awesome learning experience.

Since we wanted to have dedicated circuits for both the fridge and microwave (required for a fridge, and desirable for the microwave), the first thing to do was make sure we could add two new circuits to our electrical panel. Our main panel was full:

But the previous owner had a second panel installed and it had three empty slots in it (the gray rectangles are where new circuits could go).

Our new circuits are dual function GFCI/AFCI circuit breakers, which are pricier but we were told are the right thing to use in a kitchen. We were adding a dedicated 15 Amp circuit for the fridge and 20 Amp circuit for the microwave, which can be purchased at Home Depot (15 Amp and 20 Amp). Our panel is made by Murray, and even though circuit brands are supposed to be interchangeable, our pro told us that sometimes manufacturers don’t play nice with each other so we went with Murray circuits as well.

In case this is all gibberish to you (it was to me), here’s what those designations mean. GFCI stands for “Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter,” which means that the circuit will trip when it detects current flowing through the wrong path (like a person!). GFCI is a pretty standard safety requirement now, either in the outlet if you aren’t adding a new circuit, or in the circuit itself if you’re adding a new circuit. The problem with a GFCI outlet rather than circuit is that if the circuit trips you need to reset it on the outlet itself by pushing the little reset button, which is hard to do if it’s behind a refrigerator. If you have a GFCI circuit breaker, you can then use any old outlet you want, and if the circuit trips you reset it on the electrical panel.

Meanwhile, AFCI stands for “Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter,” which trips when the circuit detects any arcing (sparking) between wires — that’s specifically to prevent fires. We went with dual function circuits to be extra secure — protection from both electrical shock and electrical fire.

Here’s the second electrical panel with the cover off, and you can see the three empty slots.

It was easy to add the two new circuits — they just slide and pop right in. However, this is NOT something you should do yourself — there are a lot of hot live wires in the panel, and if you accidentally brush the wrong thing you can really hurt yourself!

Next up was running the first wire from the electrical panel (not yet connected to the circuit, so no current flowing through it) to the wall where the new outlet would go. We started with the 15 Amp circuit for the fridge, which uses 14 gauge wire (a 20 Amp circuit uses 12 gauge wire). We ran the wire up and along the rafters of the basement, alongside a lot of other previously-run electrical wires. To run the wire up into the kitchen wall, we actually used the water line I installed for the fridge as a helpful guide. We wanted the new outlet to be in line with that hole but about 4 inches further back (ie in the middle of the wall), so that gave us a guide from below as to where to drill into the ceiling of the basement. Then we snaked the wire up through the hole we’d drilled, and went upstairs with our fingers crossed.

We used a plastic “old work” electrical box — they are called “old work” because they are intended to be installed in an existing wall. When you’re starting from scratch, you can install a box by screwing it directly into a stud. But when you’re installing into an existing wall, the box doesn’t have anything to screw into. Old work boxes have little plastic tabs that flip up when you tighten the screws, fastening the box to the wall.

To cut a hole the right size, we traced the box onto the wall where we wanted it to go.

Then we drilled out the corners:

And then cut out the rest of the box with a saw.

We discovered that our walls appear to be double-thickness sheetrock, with the outside layer an older form of sheetrock that is very hard and has lots of actual rock in it.

We’re not sure exactly how that got on the outside of the wall with the newer sheetrock inside….

That left us with a perfectly-sized hole in the wall, and miraculously the wire was right there waiting to be pulled out!

Then all we had to do was strip off the plastic sheathing from about 8 inches at the end of the wire, bring it through the back of the box, and attach the right wires to the right terminals on the new outlet.

Let there be light!

Just kidding, because the wire wasn’t hooked up to the circuit downstairs yet, obviously. That was the final step, and was pretty straightforward — hot (black) wire to hot terminal, neutral (copper) to neutral, and equipment grounding conductor (copper) to ground bar.

Then we switched the breaker on, and went to check our handiwork. To see if everything was properly wired, we used an outlet tester. It has little LED lights on it that light in different patterns to show whether the outlet is wired properly and if not what the specific issue is. The two yellow lights mean the outlet is wired properly. Success!

Then we repeated the whole process with the 20 AMP circuit to add an outlet for the microwave where the pantry will be. This one was slightly more complicated because it needed to be higher up on the wall, and after we cut the first hole we discovered that there was a horizontal piece of wood below the hole running between the studs that was blocking the wire from coming up. Our solution was to cut a second hole below that wood piece then get the wire out from that hole:

Then through the second wall hole we used a long drill bit to drill a hole up through the piece of wood. We could then pass the wire through that hole and into the top hole for the outlet. I’m glad I’m not the only one who encounters setbacks sometimes, even the pros do!

And just like that, we had two new outlets!

The second project involved capping off the overhead recessed lights that sit where our new cabinets will go.

This was slightly more complicated because they are part of a circuit that controls a bunch of other outlets and light switches too, so we couldn’t just remove the circuit or something. Also, the light switch for these lights is in the same box as an outlet, so we couldn’t even just remove the light switch without also dealing with the outlet. And then about a foot over is a light switch I actually want to keep (on the same circuit), so I wanted to figure out if there was a way to combine the outlet and keeper light switch in a single box and eliminate the unnecessary light switch from the equation.

We started by turning off the power to the circuit, and then disassembled both boxes to figure out what was running where.

Then we took out the recessed light fixtures.

We were able to trace the wire connecting the fixtures to the wall switch, which we removed. That meant no electrical was running up into those ceiling holes anymore, and we could just seal up the holes.

Next we ran the wiring from the switch we wanted to keep into the hole where the removed switch was (the double that also included the outlet), and rewired everything so that the box now had one outlet and the switch we wanted to keep. I wanted to switch to white outlets while we were at it (the fridge and microwave outlets will be hidden, but this one will be visible) so we used a new white outlet and a white light switch I’d bought. The previous light switches were dimmers, but dimmer switches that work with LED bulbs are really expensive and I didn’t feel like the two recessed lights in question really needed to be on a dimmer anymore so I just used a standard light switch.

The final step was to patch the holes we’d created and the holes left by the recessed lights we’d removed. I’d never patched sheetrock before, but it was pretty straightforward. We started by cutting scrap wood to size to fit across the back side of each opening. Then we screwed that wood in from the outside, and countersunk the screws so their heads were just below the surface of the original sheetrock.

Next we cut new sheetrock to fit inside the holes. For the circular pieces, we used a bowl that was the exact right size to trace the shape.

This sheetrock was much easier to cut than the old stuff on my walls, so it was quick work with the hand saw.

Next we screwed the sheetrock into the wood backings.

And lastly we mudded over the openings with joint compound.

None of these holes will end up being visible in the new kitchen, so we didn’t bother to get them too perfect. If they were going to show, we’d do a few more passes to get them totally even before touching up with paint.

And with that, our wall is officially ready for cabinets! It’s going to be a big couple of weeks for the kitchen. This weekend I’m not doing any work because it’s Sam’s 30th birthday and also I have a 22-mile race in New Hampshire. But then the next weekend I plan to build the fridge surround, the weekend after that my dad is coming to help work on the pantry and other cabinets, and then that following week our contractor is coming to take down the wall (and at the end of that week, I’m running the Boston Marathon). Holy woah! You know I’ll be keeping you posted every step of the way!