Kitchen update #4: Electrical

Electrical is fun. I've always enjoyed it. Sure, it can be frustrating. But ultimately, the at-times complexity of it gives me a good challenge. Keeps me sharp. I guess then, fortunately, we planned a fair amount of electrical updating for our kitchen remodel:

• Updating the single light fixture and light above the sink with four sets of track lighting
• Running a new branch circuit from the garage for the heated flooring element
• Running an extension under the floor to the island so it would have power (questionably, per code)
• Adding more outlets above the countertop because the previous owners spaced them oddly and there never seemed to be one where we wanted it
• Adding an outlet under the countertop extension because we've taken to placing our microwave there to save space
• Changing out the undercabinet light fixtures
• Updating all of the outlets to decorator ones with screwless coverplates
• Removing a mystery switch that we had no idea what it turned on/off

I think that was it. With the flooring finished, it was time to get to work. Knowing the plan for our to-be tiled backsplash, the first step was to cut out the sheetrock so we could access the walls and run new cable.

Backing up a smidge, I intentionally set the height of the horizontal cut above the countertops to be half the height of the new electrical boxes. That also minimized scrap of the 1/2" cement board, which comes in sheet sizes of 3'x5'. 9" per strip allowed for four strips without any waste. We'd cut (well, score and snap) and install that once the electrical was complete.

I then went around and cut 3/4" holes through all of the studs so we could pass cables through them around the countertops. Having done this a long time ago on our first kitchen remodel, I knew to hack out the studs in the corner where they met so I could fish the cable behind them.

I then used my trusty fish tape to get them through. We wanted another outlet in this corner for K's stand mixer and had to pull power from the existing one.

I also added an outlet just to the right of the cooktop. The other one always seemed too far away to be useful. Worth noting: we have two 20A circuits for the kitchen countertop outlets, both protected by a GFCI. 

Next, I took apart the mess that included the mystery switch. Since we were doing all this updating, K figured why deal with a switch we never used. She made a good point.

She also saw on the internets a nifty box contraption that has the room of a duplex but only has a single-gang opening. I could fit all of the existing cable while successfully pulling the mystery switch out of the circuit. Nifty. 

Boom.

Next was adding an outlet under our countertop extension. For power, I pulled it from an outlet almost directly above (the outlet on the far left). From inside the under-the-cooktop cabinet, I pulled a cable through and put together the requisite metal-clad cable and housings. It was a short run.

Next easiest task was to change out the undercabinet lights. The previous owners had installed flourescent light strips. We wanted the look of individual pucks that cast a classy triangular pattern of light below each one. To simplify the wiring, the catch was they needed to be 120v without a transformer. We went with two 3-packs of these LED pucks. Without a transformer, it was a simple matter of splicing their wires to standard 12-gauge (we could have used 14-gauge but 12 is what we had on hand) NME cable.

We wired the new pucks to the same switch the fluorescent strips had used. Then tested.

Moving right along… Those were all the relatively simple updates. The next two tasks on the list, running a new branch circuit and splicing into an existing one for the island, were a bit more involved. Our circuit breakers are both out in the garage. Not far, thankfully, from the kitchen. Still, the question remained: how would I get a cable from the breaker box to where I needed it in the kitchen and run another cable under the floor to power the island.

After some probing in the garage, I was fortunate this time around (less so when installing the gas service line for our fireplace). In the garage just above the basement door, I discovered the space between the floor joists led directly underneath our kitchen sink and island. Wow. Boom. I could pull both cables up under that sink cabinet and none would be the wiser.

Since I wasn't running cable inside a wall, I had to splurge on a 100' spool of metal clad (MC) cable. With the run determined, it was just a matter of getting K to help pull cable. Lots of cable. Before worrying about getting it sorted in the kitchen, I had to deal with the breaker box. Having wired a new branch circuit for our final bathroom remodel in our previous Craftsman house, this was straightforward. Also, this only required a modern 20A breaker that I could pick up at Home Depot rather than sourcing an old, maybe-sketchy breaker from Ebay.

There were plenty of available spots for another breaker on either of our 200A panels. I started by stripping and pulling enough of the cable through the top of the box and securing it per code.

To meet code with MC cable, the connection through the box required the correct cable clamp and the matching size (for the diameter of MC cable) bushing. Then I made the connections, first for the ground and neutral wires to the neutral bus and finally the hot wire to the breaker itself. Once in place, I could clean up the cables, secure them to the others with a zip tie, and snap out the metal piece where the breaker fit to label it.

Installed. Now to get back to the kitchen and finish routing everything up there. It was a tight fit under the sink cabinet and a tighter bend for MC cable, but possible.

The cable on the left was the splice that I would make to wire up the island, while the cable on the right was headed to the nearby corner wall to power the heated floor. One of the smaller projects for our kitchen remodel involved ditching the useless (and apparently expensive, like over $1000) trash compactor for a much more useful Ikea trash-recycle-combo cabinet. This meant we didn't need the circuit and its sole outlet for the compactor. So I could splice into it and run that under the floor over to the island. Like the new cabinet, we knew having power at the island would be incredibly useful. Splicing it to the MC cable was easy.

As mentioned, very thankfully, the island just fell over the space between the floor joists I had used to run the new branch circuit. It was a simple matter of running a length of MC cable from that new splice to underneath the island. Then pulling it up and over to the other side of the island where I'd be installing the outlet.

Switching gears to the heated floor circuit, I ran that under the cabinets, behind the dishwasher, and around the corner to the wall where the thermostat was going to be placed. The final run up the wall was tedious, I'm not gonna lie, mainly due to the type of insulation that was placed in the wall. I'm not complaining because it's good stuff. It's just very, very dense. Trying to shove and pull cable through it, then, is tough. In the end, of course, I got it all set. I made sure to run the power cable through a flexible conduit per the instructions.

The final piece was to install the outlet in the island. The waterfall countertop came with a cutout for it, lined up with the hole I had made in the cabinet for the electrical box.

Never having installed an electrical box in 2"-thick granite, I wasn't quite sure how it was done. So I hacked it with some drywall shims and toggle bolts. Maybe surprisingly, it worked. The box was solid.

For the wiring, I learned that when using a metal box, it needs to be grounded. The box, that is. Otherwise, if the box isn't grounded and there's a short in the circuit, it can become live. No doubt, plenty of people have been shocked by a hot electrical box. So I took the ground wire from the MC cable, wired it to the ground screw in the box, and then ran a pigtail ground to the outlet.

In order for our hidden drawer to close, I then had to shave off the bolts. It was a tight fit regardless.

Lastly, I think, I had to repair the drywall around the now-single light switch. Also on the internets, K came across the ol' California method. I have no idea why it's called that, but I thought it also seemed pretty nifty. Essentially, it involves taking a piece of scrap drywall and cutting off four sides, leaving only the front paper for edges. Then applying mud to the back of the paper to stick to the wall. It actually makes sense and worked great for this application. If we'd be installing something hanging in that spot, I'd have done a different method that used anchors behind the patch. For a switch this method was fine.

With that, the electrical was finished. Time to move on… to plumbing.