In the entry way of my house we have a small table with a lamp on it. We have had it there for the last 10 years. It looks nice but the lamp has never been turned on. The reason is there is no power outlet in the entry way. We kept the lamp there because we thought it looked nice even if it couldn’t be used. I recently decided it was time to change this situation and install an outlet behind the table. Part of the inspiration was admittedly due to my jump into home automation and the thought this light might be used for notifications.

My dad fixed everything around our house when I was growing up and he always involved his children, even if at times we weren’t excited about it. What I didn’t realize at the time was the vast amount of knowledge he was passing on to me while I was holding a flashlight or handing him a tool. Thanks to my dad’s aversion to calling a repair man when things went wrong, I have a large amount of home and car maintenance knowledge that I might not otherwise have acquired. Since I am now the dad, and my son, who is eight, usually enjoys helping me out with projects, I make sure to involve him in each home repair or update I do so that the knowledge can continue its journey down to the next generation.

Installing this outlet was going to be easy enough, there was an outlet in the bedroom on the other side of the wall. We just needed to do some scouting and see what unknowns might try and hinder us. First thing we did was break out the stud finder to see if there was a wall stud between the existing outlet and the location we wanted to put the new outlet. After I showed my son how it worked and had him try it out by finding a stud I knew the location of, he slid the stud finder from point A to point B on the wall behind the table and determined there might be a stud. Going from B to A showed no alert but A to B kept finding a stud edge. Since the bedroom is slowly being remodeled and will be getting a fresh coat of paint soon, we skipped the technology solution and used a hammer to sink a small nail into the sheetrock on the bedroom side every half inch in the area the stud finder kept triggering. Part of the remodel is tearing out some thick vinyl wallpaper and I still have one section left. It turns out that from the other side of the wall, the stud finder was sensing a difference when moving from a blank part of the wall to the wallpapered section. The nail confirmed we nothing inside the wall in our way and we got ready to cut our hole.

We measured the height of nearby outlets to make sure we were putting the new outlet in the right place. Then while I held the outlet box in place, my son held the level and let me know once I had it straight so i could draw the outline. Next came the fun part, cutting a hole in the wall! What little kid doesn’t want to do something like this? I got each of the four cuts started and then guided my son as he learned how to use a sheetrock saw. Once he had freed the rectangular piece of sheetrock from the wall, we stuck my phone in the hole and used the camera to make sure there were no additional surprises. We could see the other electrical box! We made sure our new ‘old work’ blue electrical box slide nicely into the hole and I explained to him how the ‘ears’ of the box would pop up and hold the box in place when we turned the mounting screws. With all of the destruction out of the way, we were ready to move to the next step.

My son has previously used my multimeter when we were were building electronic circuits but he was a bit surprised when I wanted to stick the probes into the wall outlet. But we don’t stick anything in an outlet!?! While his toddler training had successfully sunk in, it was time to upgrade his knowledge. We verified that we had ~120 volts at the existing outlet and went out to find the breaker to turn it off. Our breaker panel is labeled fairly well and we got the right one on the first try. Going back into the bedroom with the light now off, we confirmed the multimeter now read 0 volts. It was now safe to proceed. We unscrewed the outlet from the wall and cut a two foot piece of Romex from a spool. With my son manning the new hole on the other side, I fed the wire through an empty hole in the existing outlet box. Once he spotted the wire coming his way he pulled it out of the hole. We fed the wire through a hole in the new outlet box and slid the box into the hole. Once we had the box secure in the wall I showed him how we strip the individual wires and where they go on the outlet. Since electrical connections need to be tight, I opted to tighten those screws for him. We secured the outlet to the box, put the face plate on and headed back into the bedroom. I explained the what each of the colors of wires meant and that we have to make sure we only connect the same colored wires together. we quickly had the connections completed and the outlet back in the wall. Now was the moment of truth. We turned the breaker back on and verified that we once again had ~120 volts at the old outlet. Instead of testing the new outlet with the multimeter we opted for a bit more dramatic flare. We plugged in the lamp and turned it on. Nothing! Turns out there is no point putting a light bulb in a lamp that has no where to plug in. We turned the lamp back off, screwed in a light bulb and tried again. Let there be light!

We had a great time doing this project together. My son was proud of his work and my wife was excited that the lamp actually worked now. The only thing we failed to do during this project was turn that phone around and capture some images of us working on our project. Oh well, the father son time will be remembered even without the photos and the working lamp is proof we got the project done.

What was the last project you included your son or daughter in? While school teaches our children a lot of useful information, we still have a wonderful opportunity to pass on skills to our kids by simply involving them in everyday projects. Take some time this week and find an opportunity to pass on knowledge to the next generation. If you do this, let me know in the comments below what you accomplished.

Jacob