Installing ceiling light in old wiring

[bezucha]

I was attempting to install a ceiling light in my living room. The house has old cloth wiring. The box I was hoping to tie it into has two switches: One was for my porch light, and the other was for the outlets in the room (not "switched" outlets, mind you- the switch turns all of them on or off). I ran 14-2 romex to the box, and added a dimmer switch. I updated the other two switches, as they were fairly old. Once I'd hooked everything up, the porch light was working, but ONLY when the outlet switch was off. The indoor light switch didn't work at all, though there was current running to it. I tried unwiring the porch light, and that resulted in the inside light working, though extremely weak, only when the outlets were switched off, and the dimmer had little to no effect. Prior to messing with this at all, the porch light and the outlets were able to function completely independently. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

 

[Lucien Nunes]

It sounds like you have connected one or more lights in series, so that the switch of one shorts out the other, and the voltage at each point is reduced or variable. A likely cause is that you have picked up what you thought was a neutral but is actually a hot. In fact there might not be any neutral available at the switch location, in which case it will not be possible to feed your new ceiling light from there.

Can you post pictures of the wiring in the switch box with as much info as you have on how they were originally wired up?