We have these lights in our soffit that we use most when in the kitchen. They're directly over the counters, so they light things up best. The only problem is they have only one switch. It's across the kitchen by the sink and next to the disposal switch. Sometimes when you come in the kitchen in the dark, you'll accidently hit the disposal switch and scare the crap out of yourself. At the door is a single switch for the overhead light, but we hardly use that one. What we wanted was a second switch for the soffit lights placed next to the overhead light.

For the longest time I thought I'd have to run the 3-way wires up through the attic to make this work, so I put the whole thing off. Recently it occurred to me I could run the 3-way wire through the basement. Game on!

I expected the single switch to be easy - cut the single box out, cut a bigger hole, install a 2 gang box, run the wires and done. It didn't quite go that way. There were old electric baseboard heating wires in the wall, some kind of drywall patches and a drywall seam an inch below the opening. The seam proved to be the worst part. The drywall cracked and the 2 gang box I wanted to put in wouldn't work with the damaged drywall. Blah blah blah, the worst part was the picture below.

Downstairs I had only two wires going up into the wall. In the box I had four coming in the bottom??? Turns out the disposal wires were mystery wires. I never really figured out where they came from or went. My guess is when the previous owners redid the kitchen, they added the disposal and the receptacles it was daisey chained with and ran the wires through the walls. Most of my wires run up and down from the basement - rarely do they traverse a wall. That left two wires coming in for the light and one wire going out. They were using the light as a junction. Since I had to run a 3-way wire into the box, I decided to pull the junction out and make in downstairs.