Need some electrical advice

[heat seeker]

I'm hoping one or more of you guys can give me some advice.

Background: I'm helping a friend with her house wiring. The kitchen light is controlled by two switches. Only one works. I discovered that her son replaced the two three way switches with single pole switches. Apparently not knowing what to do with the white wires, he attached them to the ground terminals on the switches. Right now only one switch turns the light on and off. If the other switch is moved to the other position, the light doesn't' work at all. That makes me think a runner is missing.

I'm familiar with house wiring, but there's no way I can get even the correct three way switches to work any different from the son's wiring job. I remember noticing that there is a black wire cut off in one box. I will look at it better tomorrow. I'm thinking the son didn't "need" the black wire and cut it off right where it comes into the box. I'm thinking that the wire is a runner from the other switch.

My problem: if I find out tomorrow that the black wire is indeed a runner, how can I safely and legally use it? I will try to pull the Romex more into the box, but doubt that will work. Pulling the box is out since it's plastered in, and I'm not too interested in making a big deal out of this.

Any ideas/suggestion? Other than calling in a real electrician...

 

[Hogwildz]

If you have enough of the black wire left in there, you can splice an extension wire to it, and wire nut & tape the splice.
I had a similar issue of the previous homeowner here running wires only about 1-1/2" into one of the boxes here.
Chances are, if they did it right, it is stapled and you won't get much slack to pull it further in. Even if it isn't stapled, you prolly won't get much to pull on.
But hey, sometimes you can get lucky, and maybe they left a good amount of slack in there. Don't yank too hard though, you don't want a wire pulled into a hard bend/angle.

 

[heat seeker]

Yeah, I think we're up the creek. The son cut the wire right where it enters the box, no chance for a splice. I'll give it a pull to see if there's any slack.
Thanks for your reply, and that's a good point about not yanking too hard. The house was built on spec a long time ago, and wasn't the best built. That could work in my favor if they didn't staple the wiring! I'll know more this afternoon.

 

[SlyFerret]

There are few things I hate more than trying to troubleshoot somebody else's crazy 3-way switch wiring. My dad and I were doing that at my place last weekend. In our case there were lots of other wires in the box and the walls were all finished so we couldn't easily tell where everything ran off to.

Good luck!

-SF

 

[Hogwildz]

Worst case scenario, you can cut some wallboard and maybe move the box down or up, depending on wire location, to give yourself enough wire for hook up or splice, then patch the wallboard and paint.
Sucks, but not many options. If the wires are running both up & down out of the box, your pretty much hosed, unless you can fish a new set of wires one way or the other.