Home Lighting/Electrical Wiring Config Issue?

Question

Wife wanted me to pull down the ceiling fan/light from the dining room and put up a light she got from Lowes.

So I thought it would be easy.. nope.. ran into a quinky dink... i'm not a home wiring guru, so this wiring config baffles me.

Dining room has two switches on the wall. One switch powers the light outside the back door. The other switch powers the light in the dining room. Then on the dining room ceiling is the octagon box. Apparently there is only one line running from the breaker here, that somehow was configured to both switches.. to allow each light to turn on independently. The octagon box has the 3 sets of wires running to it.

Its regular 3 wire, wiring. Black(hot), Neutral(white) and ground(bare copper).

So.. any gurus know how I would wire this up? I should have really took notes, before I ripped the celing fan out.

Answer 1

Without a meter, it will be hard. If you can find a bulb socket that you can s***w a bulb in and use for a tester it would help. One if the 3 is bringing power to the box. first you have to find it. Then make sure both wall switches are turned off. then hook one of the other 2 wires black to black and white to white, to the wire bringing in power and go turn the porch light on... DO NOT Turn on the dining room light. Once you have found the porch light, then power in and the porch light will remain black to black and white to white. Then take the remaining wire and put it black to black with all the other wires and you hook your celing light between the white wire from the remaining wire (to the black of the lamp) and the white wire  of the of the lamp to the other 2 whites that are already together. And dont forget to hook all of your grounds together.

Answer 2

Call a qualified professional electrician, it's a couple of hours at the most, but too hard to explain.