Uh-Oh...

I've discovered something about electricians.  The better they are at their job, the worse they are at keeping a room/house clean.  If you recall my previous post, there was a slight hole left after George finished his work.  He needed to access the electrical box from the inside of the house, so out came a smallish square of drywall.  (what I love is my blogging program doesn't even balk at smallish as a word anymore...)  

Apparently George already had the screws and felt a need to use each and every one of them!!  There are count 'em, 22 screws holding up the slightly larger than 8x10 piece of drywall.  The floor, baseboards and nearby furniture was full of drywall dust and pieces.  Yucky stuff.  After a couple of vacuums and several scrubbings, (why can't that stuff come up the first time??,) room is starting to look more like normal.  There still was the matter of the screws though.

Out came the large bucket of drywall compound, tape and floats.  Within a quick afternoon, the entire hole was covered.  Then, with a quick swipe of orange peel in a can, not kidding here, the entire hole was fixed. 

While it was indeed patched, it wasn't exactly un-noticeable if you know what I'm talking about.  So, I dug out the paint from the walls and did a double coat paint job.  After a short dry time, I re-hung the PLAY and now it's impossible to find the hole.

 

I must say that I'm pretty happy with the results and thrilled to once again have a "finished" (I use the term loosely) guestroom.

When we last spoke...

I showed you the results of my fabulous electrician plus the not so fabulous after effects of the work.  In case you don't recall, I didn't go looking for things to dump massive amounts of money on.  All I wanted to do was put in a couple of lights in my new pantry.  That is exact moment when the bottom fell out and I discovered that my entire electrical box had to be removed and replaced.  Ugh.

Now, fast forward two-three months (can't recall exactly) and with my new electrical box, I'm finally ready to get those lights in. 

With 100+ temps outside, not to mention inside a stuffy attic, we crawled up there EARLY one morning and tapped into the new wiring to run power for my new can lights in my pantry.  

With tons of effort, literally dripping sweat through the holes in the ceiling down to the floor below, we installed the two lights.  I also learned that drywall nowadays is slightly thicker than drywall from 1961.  In fact, just thick enough to elicit dirty words from us while trying to get the sweet little clips to adhere.  After a slight argument with involving a pair of vice grips, the clips snapped into place and my ceiling looked liked this.

Anyone notice anything wrong with these pics?  

Anyone?  

Anyone?  

Yes, you in the back.

That's right.  These are brand new lights, with power hooked up and new bulbs and they're not on.  Whoops!  

Great... 

Fabulous... 

Bleep... 

By the time we figured this out, it was way too late in the day to continue working on the triple digit attic.  We had no idea where the fault lay, but it drove us nuts.  See, with the new electric layout, the walls were becoming choked with switches and outlets and driving me more than a little batty trying to figure out what went where.  So, in blatantly copying my little brother, I went with an automatic switch in the door jam to flip the light as soon as the door was opened.

So, now we were left with trying to figure out if it was the switch, the new wire (doubtful), my wiring abilities (my personal favorite) or the lights them self. 

After a quick trip up into the attic the next morning, (of which I had no involvement with, which is most likely why it worked) my lights came on.  It turns out that it was the quick connect adapter thingy (technical term) where you connect black to black, white to white and ground to ground.  (see?  I was listening!)  Anywho, the lights are now functional each and every time the door is opened.  

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

Happy Fourth of July!

Have a safe and Happy 4th!