Dear Guys,
I have a house where the idiots did not install overhead light fixtures in any of the bedrooms. Instead, the light switches next to the doors operates to turn on and off the top sockets of the numerous outlets in the rooms. I guess they thought it would be trendy to force people to use desk lamps to light the rooms.
I am installing an overhead fixture in every bedroom. There is an incoming hot electric wire coming into the existing boxes of the light switches. So my plan for each bedroom is to run a wire from the new light fixture, up into the attic (immediately overhead) and down in the wall next to the existing light switch. If I can get this wire inside of the light switch box, I can use the power in the box to operate the overhead light.
I have no problem in drilling a hole in the top of the plate, in the wall in which the switch is mounted, or with feeding the new wire down into that hole so the it ends up near the switch box. My problem is that I can't figure out how to get it inside the box.
How do I punch out the plastic tab in the back of an existing finished box?
Then, how to I fish the new wire, so that it will come through the new hole in the back of the box?
I am hoping that there is a way to do this without cutting a hole in the drywall around the existing box, because I don't want to have to repair it. I thought about trying to remove the existing box (plastic) by somehow cutting the side nails that hold it into the stud, thus making all of the wires visible in the square hole in the drywall, and then simply pushing all of these wires by hand into the back of a new box, and then mounting the new box by putting it back in the same hole. (I guess I would use a remodel box, that has plastic tabs to hold it in the wall, instead of driving nails to hold it in.) But, I can't quite figure out how to cut the existing nails holding the existing box.
Any and all advice and comments are appreciated.
Thanks, Mannyrock