It's Electric

Today's project was a pretty quick one, since I've replaced outlets before, but might take you a little longer if you're new to it.

Electricity is nothing to play with, but certainly something that any homeowner should be familiar with.  I have all kind of outlets at my house that need to be replaced.  It's not that they don't work, it's that the builders must have used the cheapest outlets available so anytime you plug something in, it's all loosy goosy and the plug literally just falls out.  It's ridiculous.  I never realized there was a difference between the outlets at the hardware store.  Now I know why there is.  Grah!  But the reason I'm replacing this particular outlet is because it's in the way.  We have a beautiful old wooden door that I recently hung to slide across the doorway to our bathroom.  The problem is that there is an outlet positioned along the wall that it slides across.  This is the only outlet we have available for plugging in our television, cable box and DVD player.  It's not that the door cannot fully open, it's just what presently stops the door from sliding further across the wall are the plugs and not the doorstop - and I fear that eventually that door will bump the plugs too many times and break off one of the prongs in the outlet.

I went to Home Depot and found a recessed outlet.  This is perfect for my needs here.  You might also find it handy if you're wanting to hang a television on the wall and have an outlet behind it, or if you want to be able to position some piece of furniture closer to the wall.  They also have some that have a connection for ethernet, etc. if you are needing something more particular like that.  It fits right into any standard single-gang new or old work box (electrical box) so all you have to do is pull out the old outlet, replace it with this new one and you're back in business.

First, figure out what circuit you're working with and shut it off at your electrical panel.  That's a real pain in the @ss at my house, because some genius labeled our panel will all kind of labels for "lights" and no indication what rooms they went to.  :(  At some point I really should go through there and relabel everything.  In the meantime I either have my husband yell from the other room when I get the right one, or I spend about 10 minutes running back and forth to figure it out.  Hahaha, I like how obvious that "?" is in the picture on the left.  It is seriously a guessing game.  You can pretty easily figure out if you got the right circuit by turning on a light or plugging something into the outlet in question.

Once you get back the room, before you open anything up you want to double check that you killed the power with a device like the yellow and black one in this picture I took of the tools I used.  Well, the bigger yellow/black one.  It has a flat part on the end that you can easily insert into an outlet or your can touch the side of electrical wires and it will give a light and sound to let you know if there is still electricity running through it.  The other tools are wire cutters/strippers (green handles), a little flat head screw driver (small black/yellow item), and a screw driver (minue is red and black).

    

You've shut off the power, so now take the face plate off the outlet and then unscrew the top and bottom philips head screws that are holding the outlet in place.

Pull the outlet and wires out of the box so you can get a better look at what you're dealing with.  If the outlet is the last in the line of the circuit, you'll only have a white (line) wire and a black (load) wire coming in.  If the outlet is in the middle of the circuit, it will have a white and black wire coming in and a white and black wire leaving to go to the next outlet or whatever is next on the circuit.  In this particular case, we also have a red wire.  That's because our bedroom has one of those nice switches that turns on and off the top outlet in the room.

Switching over the outlets is pretty simple at this point.  You are really just going to move the wires, to the exact same location on the other outlet.  The bare copper wire (ground) moves to the green colored screen, and you can see how the wire is pinched around the screw, and then the screw is tightened to hold it in place with the screw driver.  You can pinched the wire with your fingers, but I find the ends of the wire clippers do a great job with this as well.

Next we need to move over the white, black and red (for me).  These wires are held into the current outlet with the straight wire shoved into the back.  Some outlets don't have this option and thus your wires may be wrapped/pinched around screws.  For those shoved straight into the back, you have to release them with the tiny flat head screw driver (as shown here).

Once the wires are released, they can be shoved into the back of the new outlet.  I opt to release one wire at a time so I can be sure I'm moving them over into their identical position on the new outlet.  I ran into a small problem because on the lower outlet that I was removing, I have 2 black wires, and only one spot to most them to on the new outlet.  So one was shoved in the back and the other had to be bent and wrapped around the screw.

To bend the wire easily, insert the end of the wire into one of the holes on your wire clippers/strippers.  Then smoothly turn the wire clippers over so the wire attempts to wrap around the end.  This will create a nice smooth 180-degree turn in the wire that fits beautifully around the screw on the side of the outlet.

One other note I will make is that while I was moving the wires over, I purposefully relocated the bottom outlet wires to the new top outlet and vice versa.  I did this because the new plug I have picked up could only go into the top outlet, and I didn't really want to constantly be messing with that outlet being turned on and off.

Your final step is to man-handle those wires into submission and get them back into the electrical box.  This is much easier when you only have 2 or 3, a little harder with 6.  You just have to be sure you made strong connections to the outlet (so that being a little rough won't cause something to slip loose), put a little intentional bend so they can fold up on themselves, and then shove!

 Once you've got it all screwed back into the wall, turn back on your circuit and test it out.  I first made sure the door moved smoothly in front of it (which I had no doubt it would).

Then I stuck in my surge protector/extension cord and tested the door again.  Perfection!!

If the idea of electrical stuff makes you too nervous to try this out, don't fret.  You're not alone.  Find a friend who is confident or call an electrician (though it will cost you).