While the front of our house is sporting a new door, it’s light fixtures leave something to be desired. The last time it snowed, I went outside (something I don’t typically do in the rain) and noticed that the slowly melting snow dripping off of the house was splashing directly onto this sconce.
The light fixture was forming a nice little puddle of water inside the glass globe… and also some pond scum. In addition to this fixture not matching our aesthetic, this couldn’t be safe.
I’m not sure what style-era the sconce is from, but it’s sort-of “carriage-like” design is interesting for a 1980’s contemporary. The basement front door is also sporting it’s own different “miner’s” sconce:
So, Spencer replaced both.
Hmm, this looks interesting:
We discovered in addition to the light fixture holding water, that there wasn’t an electrical box for this sconce – just wires. This also couldn’t be right.
So, instead of simply removing the old fixture and bracket – and replacing with the new, this just got more invasive. We decided to install a new electrical box and would have to replace the (fortunately) small piece of cedar siding that would be affected by the upgrade.
You can totally use a jig saw like a reciprocating saw. Spencer cut the hole a little wider just to verify that there was indeed no sign of an electrical box.
We also only noticed at this point – because we don’t usually stare at our siding for long periods of time – that the paint was a slightly different color…
… and that we really needed to re-caulk the house in some places. The previous owners must have re-caulked this area before and had to use some touch up paint. I can understand why this area may need it: it does get very hot on this side of the house in the summer.
Gently removing the entire board:
The back side of the cedar looked like it had been moist at some point.
I was actually expecting the sheeting to be a bit worse than it was.
Why, hello there, the edge of drywall inside our house. This is also not a great thing to see when you are standing outside.
Back to the electrical box: simply cut the opening…
… and attach with screws:
Now to replace that cedar siding buy using the old piece as a template:
The Chicago Electric saw is still kickin’ even after all that solid walnut flooring.
A dry fit:
Drilling a hole for the wires to pass through:
Making sure all the wires are pulled through:
Caulking the hole to make sure that if any water did enter the box – which it shouldn’t – it wouldn’t go into the house.
Tada! Back to where we started. Cedar siding is very easily split by the way. This stuff gets very thin on the tapered edge too.
The new fixture bracket:
A level bracket means a level fixture:
After Spencer screwed on the provided fasteners, he caulked around the sconce to be water tight.
We wiped up the caulk after this point. Yay modern-looking front porch sconce! (We also duplicated this process by the other front door as well).
As a followup to the successful installation, we thought we would take care of the gap exposing internal bits of the house. We used minimal expanding caned spray foam – “for windows and doors” – to help seal the gap.
Our house is not air-tight by any means, but when we see a glaring problem, were going to address it.
The “minimal expanding foam” expanded quite a bit. You should see the inside of the house. (Seriously, it came through the door structure frame.) At least we know it’s sealed.
After this point, I cut off the excess foam, caulked everywhere I could reach (including the window next to the sconce) and stained the board to match the house. Fortunately, the previous home owners left us a little bit of exterior house stain from 2010. Maybe “House 2005” written on top is a clue from the last time it was stained maybe? It was very nice to just use this and also have the information so we didn’t have to try to color match the old plank. Our house is “New Bark” by Behr: it is a nice brown. It doesn’t lean too red or green… a good brown – if you like brown. These ’70’s/80’s contemporaries were all about blending into the woods, so a color with “bark” in the name is pretty appropriate.