What a busy day! I racked up some serious accomplishment tokens today, just around the house. We’ve had two lights and an electrical socket that have stopped working. The socket sizzled and popped sending chunks of old bakelite and ceramic out into the computer alcove on the second floor of my house. The lights, oh god, the lights. The wall light on the wall of the alcove has been broken for about a year and a half. The hallway light on the ground level has been dead for about two months now.
The socket was just old. I turned off the house power at the mains because I don’t trust that this house I live in was built with any kind of zone-idea when it came to the electrical distribution network here. So instead of risking my life to fix this outlet I just turned the entire house off at the service entrance. I undid the outlet and of course this is the one outlet where they snipped the wires good and short. Any pull out? None whatsoever. On the positive side the house is wired with solid copper wiring, on the negative side, the house is wired with solid copper wiring! That stuff is very stiff and once I got the old outlet out of there (some cussing and swearing) I tried to apply the new outlet and of course the posts for the wires would not stay in an up position, so I had to use a pair of scissors and a screwdriver and a needle-nose plier working with absolutely no give to the wires whatsoever. I did this at sundown of course because I’m a glutton for suffering. Scott held the flashlight and offered moral support while I went on a blue streak against the bright bulbs who built this house. Who the hell trims the wiring to fit exactly in the service box and not give any slack?!? This place does! Gah! I wished very very unpleasant things on the wire-monkey who put the upstairs wiring together. I was finally successful in getting the new outlet installed and I tested it several times and there aren’t any shorts, both plugs in the outlet work fine and that was a solid win on Saturday.
The next deal was our regular going-to-Lowes and fighting over lights. There is something about the lighting department at Lowes. It doesn’t matter which Lowes, they are all the same. When we walk in it’s like we’re both possessed by jilted lovers bent on mutual annihilation. The minute we leave the lighting department everything is fine. It’s a lot like the scene in Transylvania 6-5000 when Doctor Frankenstein goes in and out of his lab, the personality shift is that profound for us both. We needed to replace the light in the hallway on the ground level. Those that have visited us, this light is between the kitchen, bathroom, and two ground floor bedrooms. The bulb was fine, but the fixture was shot. It was my top bet that it was in the fixture because there is no reason for the switch to go bad suddenly and there isn’t any way that wires in walls can have a failure unless they’ve been nibbled on by rodents. We don’t have rodents. So, while we were at Lowes, in the lighting department, wishing we could drown each other with giant sacks of sledgehammers we came across this very neat fixture. It’s a wall-mount fixture with a oiled-copper base (that’s the color name at least) a clear glass bowl and an old style Edison lightbulb featured in the center. These bulbs really are quite awesome. They have multiple filaments and their bodies are clear so you can see the light the glowing filaments make. The bulb is designed to run at 60 watts and only give off 350 lumens of light. It’s dimmer than a standard incandescent bulb and the light is warm and very yellow. To me it’s exceptionally romantic and is a far more appealing choice than standard CFL bulbs which either put out a bluish light or a really white light. The yellow light throws off the color of the hallway, but I really like the look of it and if someone really doesn’t like it, swapping it out for a CFL while they are visiting us is not a problem. Taking down the old fixture was not a problem, the distribution box in the wall was circa 1945 and finding the right screws to fit that was a challenge. The new fixture came with a bracket, and I saw how to assemble it together. I got the old fixture out, cleaned the distribution box as best as I could and installed the bracket, routing the hot and neutral leads through the center hole in the bracket and found the right screws to attach the bracket to the distribution box. An electrician would of course have suffered a full Raiders-Of-The-Lost-Ark facemelt if they were to witness me doing the installation but I can say the damn thing works. Once I got the primary fixture up, the rest of it went very easily. In went the test CFL bulb and that worked fine so I opened up the Edison bulb and it was big and fat and beautiful. I screwed the bulb into the base (it uses a standard bulb base too) and turned it on. The six parallel filaments are glowing and I can see them from here. They throw off a very 19th Century glow.
The upstairs fixture is another matter altogether. Nobody makes fixtures like that anymore. Everyone makes vertical wall fixtures that attach to distribution boxes and in-the-wall wiring. The fixture upstairs eschews all of that for a simple fixture hung with a nail in the wall and an electrical wire running down the wall and plugging into the outlet directly below. This fixture hasn’t worked for years and I’ve been searching in vain for a new one. Several days ago it struck me that something so simple couldn’t be permanently attached and likely could be serviced. So on a previous trip to Lowes I went to the lighting department on my own and found a replacement lamp base with a brass pullchain. I bought the new base and took it home with some replacement incandescent bulbs as this fixtures shade actually attaches right to the bulb itself making CFL’s useless in that application. I grabbed the fixture, and immediately saw how the old base was attached, I pulled it apart, unscrewed the leads and put the new base on, put it all together and tested it and it worked like new! So now when you walk upstairs and turn to the computer alcove you aren’t stumbling around in the dark searching in vain for my desk lamp, the light on the wall is right there and usually will be left on when people are in the house.
Altogether I have to say I’m very pleased with my relatively low-brow DIY accomplishments. New fixtures bring a bit of freshness to this place and repairing the other fixture really pleased me as I no longer have to search in vain for a replacement fixture any longer.
Hooray for tiny accomplishments!