[SFBadger]

Thanks for the help, unfortunately, it's not turning out so easy. Sorry, I should have given more detail.

Unfortunately, this is a 1912 house, so I am not dealing with helpful coloring on the wires. Inside of each box, all three wires look exactly the same. Also, the switch terminals are all the same and are not labelled.

The way it seemed to work before I started removing covers and confusing myself is that switch 1 (at the top of the stairs) controls the power to switch 2 (at the bottom of the stairs), which controls the light. I actually expected to find two single pole switches wired in series, but I do have three way switches.

Soooo, I took an extension cord so I knew I was dealing with a proper ground, and tested the three connections on both switches. My coding system is as follows:

SW1=switch at the top of the stairs
SW2=switch at the bottom of the stairs
t1=terminal with no terminal on the opposite side of the switch (hot?)
t2=terminal on the same side as t1
t3=terminal across from t2 on its own side

Like this:
... __
t1 | |
... | |
t2 |_| t3

The switch is considered "UP" when it is on the side of t1, just like the picture above (one of my switches was installed opposite the other).

"H" means the terminal is hot, "O" means the terminal is off.

Here's what I got:

SW1....t1..t2..t3.....SW2.....t1..t2..t3......Ligh t
UP.......H...H...H.....DOWN....H...H...O.......OFF
UP.......H...H...O......UP.......O...H...O.......O FF
DOWN..O...O...O......UP.......O...O...O.......ON
DOWN..H...H...H.....DOWN....H...H...O.......OFF

So the only combination that makes the light turn on is when no terminal on either switch has any power runing through it. Huh? Trust me, I checked my measurements 3X.

Shouldn't there be a terminal on one of the switches that is always hot? Is there some knob & tube mystery that makes this more complicated? Should I give up on my dream of having three-way lights?

Thank you for reading this far.