So my wife and I moved into a new-to-us house with almond switches/outlets and we wanted to change them to white. Everything has been going swimmingly until my wife decided to do a 3-gang light switch box and now it doesn't work. I can't really say how it was when we started because she removed all wire nuts 'to clean it up', removed some pigtails, etc. So now we're starting from scratch.
So, there's 3 switches (numbered left-right in the box): SW1 is a 3 way switch that controls a set of 6 overhead lights. SW2 is a single pole switch that controls a single table chandelier. SW3 is a single pole for an outside light.
Coming in to the box, there are 5 cables, a 3 wire (cable1) and (4) 2 wires. Cable3 appears to be the source from the panel as when I separated all wires and turned on the power, only the black of cable3 had power. I know that the last two cables connect to the chandelier and outside light. There were two pigtails removed from the box, and when I pigtailed the black cable3 wire to the SW2 and SW3, and then ran the black cable4 to SW2 and black cable5 to SW3, the chandelier light and outside light both work.
But now I'm stuck figuring out how to wire the cable1/2/3 for the 3way switch. I checked the 3way switch on the other side of the room, and it has a black going to the common terminal, a white to one of the travelers, and a red to the other traveler. Tough to see directly, but it looks like all 3 come from the same cable. I've tried connecting the black of cable1 to the common, and the white/red of cable1 to the travelers, while wire nutting the black/whites from cable2/3 together. When I do this, the lights stay on but you can't turn them off (with either 3way switch). Any ideas on the next steps?