Home Improvement

I engaged in more home improvement last weekend.  The task: wiring an existing lightswitch in the basement den to operate anything but the godforsaken flourescent lights it was originally intended to control.  It started out easily enough, with four lines coming into one box - the switch leg, the demon-flourescents, the transformer for the doorbell, and another leg which ran off to a number of other lights in the unfinished portion of the basement and appeared to be the source of power from the breaker box.

I knocked down a trip to Lowe's for the parts I thought I needed and got to work.  I needed to feed power to a couple new outlets (instead of the demon flourescent lights), so they could in turn power a few somewhat-less-annoying light fixtures.  It'd been a while since I'd done any electrical work, so there was a lot of double- and triple-checking the breaker and usage of the voltmeter to make sure I wasn't going to do an amateur version of the Green Mile what-in-tha-blue-fuck-was-that scene.  So I dove in and re-wired what needed to be re-wired - removing the leg to the flourescents, feeding in my new line for the outlets, and, after an hour or so, flipped the breaker back on.

I flipped the lightswitch.  Nothing.  Plugged in my outlet circuit-checker - nothing.  Now, the worrying starts - there are two possibilities:  I've either re-wired it such that the whole thing is about to burst into flames, or I've cut off all power altogether.  After a couple minutes of profuse sweating and frantic head-scratching, I pulled out the trusty voltmeter and confirmed what I feared - the bare wires from the flourescent leg I'd removed also supplied the power to the whole mess.

This wouldn't have been a problem except that the box I'd just ripped them out of - and replaced with the new wires to my outlet - was a 3" ceiling box, and only took four connectors.  Back to Lowe's I went, for a bigger box that would take more connectors.  Upon tearing the whole thing apart again, installing the new box, and re-wiring it all over again - joy!  The outlet circuit-checker told me I hadn't fucked it up, and everything worked as intended.

To sum up: wiring electrical stuff isn't that tough, as long as you have four things: a hardware store nearby, a bit of patience, a passable knowledge of electrical wiring, and a healthy respect for the killing power of electricity.

Next week:  How To Fix A Toilet Without Flooding The State Of Wisconsin.