April 20, 2008 | Filed under: Is She Still Talking?
A How-To Guide to Changing Out Your Overhead Light Fixture
1. Electricity is dangerous, you know. Go to the box in the kitchen and disconnect the circuit to your bedroom.
2. Read diagram on inside of box. Discover that most circuits are not identified, and those that are are incorrectly identified. Fail to cut power to the bedroom, as evidenced by the light still shining and the radio still playing.
3. Curse.
4. Decide, eh, no big deal. Turn off the light switch and hope for the best.
5. Climb up on ladder to remove existing light fixture. Turn the fixture, as you expect it to unscrew.
6. Fail to remove the light fixture.
7. Curse.
8. Pull straight down on the fixture, because if it doesn’t screw on, how else would it be attached? Nearly fall off ladder as the fixture springs off the ceiling.
9. Regain balance. Curse.
10. Discover light fixture works in a completely different way than you expected, making removal much more challenging.
11. Realize you need to reattach the fixture to the ceiling so you can get a screwdriver.
12. Spend 10 minutes trying to jam the fixture back onto the screws protruding from the ceiling. Fail countless times. Curse each time.
13. Finally get the fixture half up. Hope for the best as you scramble down the ladder and dash to your toolbox and grab every screwdriver you own because you didn’t take the time to look at the screws before you left the room.
14. Climb back up the ladder, remove light fixture from ceiling again, and balance fixture in your left hand. With your right hand, remove screws protruding from ceiling onto which fixture cover attaches. Unscrew metal bracket from ceiling which is the last remaining connection from fixture to ceiling.
15. Discover the bracket is not, in fact, the last remaining connection from fixture to ceiling.
16. Curse.
17. Realize two wires — one white, one black – run from the fixture to the power source in the ceiling.
18. Decide you really should turn off the electricity at this point.
19. Realize there is no way to reattach fixture to ceiling. Also realize you’ve been holding the damn fixture in your left hand for about 15 minutes now and it’s no longer fun.
20. Consider letting fixture dangle from ceiling connected only by two wires.
21. Discard as a terrible idea.
22. Use Jedi mind trick to turn off electricity. Fail. Curse.
23. Climb down the ladder, leaving fixture dangling from the ceiling. Hope for the best.
24. Dash to the kitchen and start flipping circuit breakers. Discover the breaker to your bedroom is labeled LR A/C. Of course.
25. Climb back up the ladder and balance fixture in your left hand. With your right hand, attempt to unscrew the little yellow cap that connects the red wire coming from the ceiling with the white and black wires coming from the fixture.
26. Manage to disconnect the black wire without much effort.
26. Try in vain to unscrew the cap, thus freeing the last connection — the white wire. Succeed only in tangling the red and white wires together more.
27. Curse.
28. Consider just cutting the wire and being done with it. Wonder if you even own wire cutters. Decide maybe scissors will work in lieu of wire cutters.
29. Discard as a terrible idea.
30. Continue trying to unscrew the yellow cap. Fail repeatedly.
31. Curse repeatedly.
32. Run out of other ideas, patience, and any feeling in your left arm. Decide cutting the wire is the only way to go.
33. Climb down the ladder, leaving fixture dangling from the ceiling by a single wire. Hope for the best.
34. Discover the toolbox is wire-cutter-free. Curse. Opt for kitchen scissors instead.
35. Climb back up the ladder and balance fixture in your left hand. Debate over which wire to cut — the red or the white? Decide that, in the event this is a terrible idea, it’s better to ruin the light fixture than the power source coming from the ceiling. With your right hand, cut the remaining white wire.
36. Breathe a sigh of relief over the fact that the scissors did the trick and that you weren’t electrocuted.
37. Climb down the ladder, with freed light fixture in hand. Thank god you won’t have to do this again. Until you tackle the living room.
38. Casually mention to your father that he gets to help install your new light fixture when he visits over the summer.
39. Spend the next two months living with no overhead light and a capped-off wire sticking out of your ceiling where the light fixture should be.
40. Revel in the knowledge that it could be worse — you could still be holding that damn fixture in your left hand.
Posted by Daily Tragedies @ 6:56 pm | Make a Comment
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I too have done changed fixtures. Much cursing. Much mich cursing. Congratulations for getting it done!
April 21st, 2008 at 11:30 amIf it had been me, the list would’ve been very similar, except that I likely would’ve ended at a #36 that reads:
Sizzle, your ass is cooked. MORON.
But you are much smarter, and much luckier
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:24 amI will go ahead and not forward this link to my dad.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:31 pmWe’ve lived in this house for three years now and still not gone through to label our circuit breakers accurately - or figured out why the breaker that turns off the backyard/basement light would also turn off half (and only half) of the kitchen outlets as well as the clock upstairs.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:31 pm