My wife and I recently bought a house from people who built it in 2005 (literally — the guy was in home construction half a century), and they did some "interesting" things. One choice I'm trying to undo involves wall switches for ceiling fans. We're replacing the 5 ceiling fans, and all the models we'll use have a remote, so they don't need wall switches. One ceiling fan has 6 wall switches(!), three for the motor and three for the light in the fan. Three fans have two switches (one fan, one light), but there isn't even a light in the fan. We'd be willing to keep one switch as a master off switch for the new fan, but I would really like to get rid of the rest.
How do I make them completely disappear? In some locations, the fan switches share a box with another switch (which will stay), and in others the box has only fan switches. But in all cases, I'm faced with the chore of trying to do a "perfect" drywall job in a highly visible place or using some kind of blank plate, which is only marginally better than having dead switches all over the house.
Frankly, rather than tackle this, I'm tempted to just leave the blasted switches throughout the house.
Suggestions, anyone?
Best Answer
A perfect drywall job isn't an option, as you're not allowed to cover junction boxes or otherwise render them inaccessible.
In the case of those switches which share a box with switches for other lights, you can find partial blank plates. However, these won't accomplish your goal of cleaning up the walls.
In all cases you can nut the broken circuit legs together in a permanent fashion, but again, this alone doesn't accomplish your goal.
Unless you can access the wire routes to completely remove the wiring back to the upstream box, you're more or less out of luck.