Get a handheld electrical tester that you can hold next to any wires and if they have electricity running thru them it'll beep at you. If no beep, no electricity then take them down. Getting zapped sucks but it probably won't kill you. If you wear tennis shoes and only touch one wire at a time, you can switch out a hot light switch. Don't be skered.

Your description is so vague and honestly, no one can give you proper advice without being there and looking at it themselves.

As an electrician who has worked on homes where the bright homeowner thought they knew what they were doing and could save a few bucks….just hire someone.

If you do things wrong or end up leaving a confusing mess, you could very well end up paying more than you otherwise would have. When contractors show up to a “handy man” repair job, it instantly puts them in a bad mood. Want someone in a bad mood working on your house? Fixing what is wrong? Want someone who is saying to themselves, “well, this is how ‘thisaccountforwork’ did it and, while not right, it still works and that’s how he did it so I’m not messing with that mess” to do it?

In addition, demo is the quick and, for the most part, easy part for contractors. You won’t be saving much if you’re still paying them to come in and wire new.

If you don’t know, the full scope of precautions you should take and you don’t know anything about electrical and your best Intuition is to ask a bunch of Internet strangers whose expertise may be much less than those that you do not even possess then This is not a project that you should even be attempting. If you make a mistake, the cost is high. Electrocution, electrical, fire, loss of life and property. When the fire marshal comes in to inspect the cause of the fire and your insurance company finds out that it was a shade tree job, don’t expect your coverage to replace the damage and losses. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and do it right.

I second this, the last thing you wanna do is accidentally mess up something that works. Ripping the old stuff out or moving things in a basement is the going to cost much to have done by a pro

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Shut the breaker off, test on a live circuit to verify the meter works, test on the circuit your about to remove to verify that its not charged, proceed.

My experience with this is that it's almost impossible to manipulate a single wire on a switch without touching the (usually) grounded bracket of the switch, and if that wire is hot, you're getting zapped. In the best case of that scenario it's across your hand but if you're holding that switch with one hand and your other hand touches voltage, current flows across your body. This is how people die. Just turn the breaker off or remove the fuse.

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