Hi all, Im new to the forum and I’m currently taking an electrician course.I’m seeking out a cool idea for a class project utilizing DC batteries in some fashion. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.[left][/left]

Good morning! I wasn't sure if this thread was best posted here or in lighting but it seems to be more of a wiring issue to me so I thought I'd try here first. This one has really got me stumped, as well as my dad who is not stumped easily. So, some background: In my house I have two separate circuits that control the lights in two rooms--one circuit is for the pendant light hanging in my foyer and the other one controls the can lights in my kitchen. (BTW I have a standard 150A circuit breaker that is a subpanel since I live in a townhouse and our main breakers are outside; these are both 15A circuits.) The foyer light is on a three-pole switch and the kitchen lights are on a four-pole, and the only thing they have in common is that one switch for each circuit is located in the same two-gang box on a wall located between the two areas. I have not touched the switches in at least a year, and no electrical work has been done in my house in months. This morning, completely out of nowhere, both sets of lights have started to be controlled by all of the switches for both circuits. In other words, my foyer light can be turned on and off with any of the three kitchen switches, while my kitchen lights are now also being controlled by the two foyer switches. When any one of the five switches is used, both the foyer pendant light and the can lights in the kitchen will go on together and off together. I tried flipping the breakers for both circuits off and on and there was no change. Then I turned off just the foyer breaker. The kitchen lights turned on and off with the kitchen switches and the foyer light did not turn on. The kitchen lights did not turn on with the foyer switch. Then I turned the foyer breaker on and turned off the kitchen breaker. The foyer light went on and off with the foyer switches, and the kitchen lights did not. The foyer light did not work with the kitchen switch. Finally I turned both breakers on, and the problem resumed, with all lights working from all switches. The next thing I plan to do is to turn the breakers back off and take the switch plates off to see if anything looks weird but honestly I can't even guess right now what sort of thing could be causing this. I even googled this this morning to seek some advice but nothing even remotely close to what's happening came up. I'm hoping someone here may have some suggestions for what could cause something like this to happen out of the blue. I can think of a few things that *could* do it if I'd been messing around with wiring lately--I've actually been planning on changing out one of the kitchen switches in a different hallway for cosmetic reasons but I haven't done anything as of yet. Short of changing out the faceplate for the gang box a few years ago, I've never had to do anything to these particular switches. Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to offer! Amy