Note: Prior to working on anything electrical, turn off the corresponding circuit breaker!

I took down the light in Melissa’s office in preparation for hanging her new chandelier. Upon taking it down, I noticed immediately that there was no junction box. It was obvious because all that was left was the wire sticking out of the ceiling.

So the next night, I stopped at Home Depot to pick up a junction box. There are A LOT of choices. Here is the one I picked up:

The teeth on the flat bracket help hold the box in place on the stud while you are putting the screw in to secure it. To put in the junction box, I had to get in the attic.  In the middle of the summer, in Missouri, it is hot and muggy, especially in an attic.

I didn’t take any pictures from in the attic, because I was more worried about falling through the ceiling. And because it was hotter than hot up there and I was in a hurry to get done and get out.  So, I cleared away the loose insulation that was near where the wire went through the ceiling.

Luckily, Melissa snapped a few (creepy) photos from below that help show how hot and muggy it was up there. The air is so thick it’s foggy!

Next, I laid the junction box flat on the ceiling and used my key-hole saw to cut around it as close as possible.

TIP: Stay as close to the outside edge of the junction box as possible and try to keep the cut neat. This will help avoiding the use of a medallion. You could possibly use a razor blade to have a cleaner cut. You can see my hole wasn’t perfect…

Melissa was attempting to keep the room cleaner by holding the trash can under the hole while I was cutting. She did a decent job, although we still had a mess to clean up after, but that’s to be expected.

 

You’ll need to remove the caps from the wires to be able to push them through the box.

 

Next it was time to attach the box to the ceiling.

It is nice to have a helper for this part. After cutting the hole, you will need to attach the junction box to the stud.  With Melissa below in her office, she helped keep the junction box flush with the ceiling. Once it was flush, I used my hammer to drive the teeth into the stud to temporarily hold the junction box. Then I permanently attached it with screws from inside the attic.

Almost done! But before I could get out of the hot, muggy attic, I needed to feed the wires into the side of the junction box. I fed the wires into the side, and Melissa pulled them through. After that, I put the insulation back where I removed it from and left the attic. We now had a proper junction box!

Now I could start on hanging Melissa’s office chandelier. More on that later. Stay tuned!

Ever ran into this issue before, where the builder took a shortcut on your house? Do you always fix or weigh the risk of leaving it as is after discovered? What is worth fixing, and what is worth leaving?