January 30, 2023 - Page 2

The sheer quantity of switches to be replaced made this a big job. These two boxes, at the bottom of the stairs in the rock wall, were the worst problems. We were changing the switch plates to the new Leviton Screwless plates and you can’t just put them on top of the stone like the old style plates were. We had to cut the stone to make these fit.

As you can see, the 4 gang plate almost fits. This made this one fairly easy.

The two gang box was a nightmare. The top edge of the blue tape at the bottom is where we have to grind the stone down to. It may not look like it, but that was a lot of stone. This shot was taken after about an hour’s worth of grinding on January 20, 2023.

We started out using a battery powered Dremel, but it became obvious quickly that this was not going to work. We got the biggest corded Dremel to finish the job. We thought about going all the way to an angle grinder but worried that the vibration of that big of a tool might crack the mortar.

The top of the blue tape was, as you can see, optimistic. All the cutting has been done now on January 30, 2023. We spent 10 days cutting rock, about 2 hours a day was all we could take. You have to let the Dremel cool down between 20 minute or so long sessions.

Everything is done!

Here’s most of the grinding stones we wore out and shattered during the course of the job.