We're in the middle of a piecemeal kitchen remodel. First we had someone re-finish our existing honey-oak cabinets. They look nice but you get what you pay for. It was still worth it as we got trash/recycling inside one of the cabinets and rid of the ugly 90's style desk thing. And now they're white. Then a couple weeks ago we had new countertops installed too. Eventually we'll get new stainless appliances and probably also get the hardwood floor re-finished, though that's a ways off.
All of this was or will be hired out. Except the job I'll be doing. That's the backsplash. Gulp. Before our countertops extended up ~six inches. Our new counters do not, and we'll be doing tile. I haven't done it before and am a little nervous. I'll figure it out.
Before starting, I needed to prep the walls. The countertop installers left some holes where they ripped out the old stone, plus a lot of the glue was still there. I decided on top of that to move two of our existing electrical boxes (one outlet, one phone jack) up a bit since they didn't line up with another box nearby. Did I need to do this? No. But if I'm cutting out tile around the plates, I want them to not be obviously out of alignment. The outlet I did second and was more complicated so I'll be going over that one. The phone jack required cutting less of a hole and I was simply able to cover it with the plate. No patching.
I used a level and drew lines from the top of the other outlet and plate. I cut out the hole to the first line, plus a little more around the sides. I didn't really know what I was doing when I started, so I watched a few YouTube videos and learned some stuff. Electrical boxes are attached to studs (which I knew) by nails (which I didn't). They are installed before the drywall goes up in a house, if original, and can't just be slid up the wall an inch like I would've liked. Or well, they could be, if you want to open up the wall enough that you can swing a hammer and reinstall the box at the new location. I wanted to minimize drywall repair.
I turned off the breaker and expected pulling out the outlet to be easy, since I've wired plenty of them before. This was actually a little annoying as there was spray foam insulation where the wires come into the box (it's an exterior wall), and that was actually hard to pull out of there. Once I did get the outlet out, getting the box out was pretty easy. You use a crowbar, and slide it between the stud and pry out the nails. You want to get the nails out of the wall, then you can pull out the box. Just don't damage the drywall too much.
I ended up getting a new 'New Work' (as opposed to 'Old Work') electrical box to do this job. They work kinda like drywall anchors, where you turn a screw and it opens a panel behind the drywall. You can use these in places where you can't connect to a stud. It worked for me because I could slide it in the existing hole I had (it doesn't have nails) and screw it into the stud. Before doing this I had to open the holes for the wires in the wall, thread them through and position the new box. After I screwed it in the first time and wired the outlet, I realized the box still wasn't high enough on the wall. So I had to cut up higher and do it again. The second time it was right and I had the box installed.
At this point I had nearly a one inch gap underneath the newly positioned outlet in the wall. I had already decided to get a metal drywall patch to use in another spot (hole from installers) so I trimmed a strip off the patch and put it over the new hole below the outlet, then pulled out my premixed drywall compound and filled in the patch. None of this needs to be perfect, as it's just going to be covered with tiles. But I also want to avoid having to stop the tiling project later because there's a problematic hole in the wall.
Now I just had to push the wires and the outlet into the box and make sure everything was working as expected. Of course I shorted it (sparks), whoops, so had to pull the outlet back out and make sure none of the leads were touching. I ended up trimming some of the unnecessarily long ground wire, aligned the wires in the box a little better and pushed them back in. This time everything was good. I put the cover on and voila!
The real last thing I did was spray some can foam insulation into the box like had been done in the previous box. I also put it under the box where the drywall patch covered the hole since there's no insulation there.
Anyway, this was kinda a lot of work just to appease whatever form of OCD I have, but it'll look much nicer in the end. Plus a learned a few things.
Now onto the much bigger project.
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