A couple of weeks ago I began what I like to call The Saga of the Ceiling Fan Light, or, It All Began With a Light Bulb.... (cause, of course, I should've been a Victorian writer. Or a Hobbit writer.)
Anyway, the kids and I came home one night, and as I switched on the light in the living room, it immediately blew. I pulled out the step stool (9 foot ceilings are great, except when you have a 5 foot body and need to change a light bulb), and went to unscrew the old bulb. It immediately broke off in my hand.
After cursing (silently, of course), I went outside and turned off the power at the breaker box, then got my needle nose pliers and set to work trying to get the metal base out of the fixture. Thirty minutes or so later, I finally had it out, albeit twisted, maimed and in several pieces. I screwed in the new light bulb, turned the breaker switch back on, came in, flipped on the light..... and nothing. Sigh.
I flipped the breaker back off, unscrewed the bulb, poked around a little more, and finally discovered a green wire that wasn't connected to anything. I was pretty sure that was NOT a good thing, but equally sure that there wasn't anything I could do about it at that moment, so I ordered a pizza and called it a night.
The next day I went to Lowe's, and found a cheap light kit for ceiling fans that was pretty much identical to what I'd had on the fan (a style I like to call Early American Contractor Ugly), so I bought it. Over the weekend, I tried to install it, mistakenly starting an hour before I had to be somewhere else (big mistake). I unscrewed the old light fixture, and started pulling out the wires, waiting to see the splice where they attached to the fan wires. And waiting...and pulling...and waiting...and pulling...till finally the end of the wires (without a splice) came out.
Sigh.
I couldn't see much (dang 5 foot body again) so again I recognized (after cursing) that there wasn't much I could do at the moment, so I left it, and finally got back to it today. I was much better prepared this time, though: I brought in my mini-scaffold (best $80 I ever spent) which gives me a solid foot or two more height than my step stool, plus providing a nice little platform to stand on. With the added height, I was able to get the wiring nonsense straightened out, add on my light fixture, and Voila, I now have a well-lit living room again.
Flushed with my success, and sense my scaffold was already inside, I decided to replace the entry-way light fixture. Again, this is one of the cheap-o fixtures that came with the house, and I've had a replacement fixture for awhile now, but just hadn't gotten around to putting it up. I figured hey, it can't be THAT different from the ceiling fan light kit!
Oh, how wrong I was.
Actually, the vast majority of it really wasn't bad at all -- match up the wires, twist them together, twist together the two copper grounding wires, and all should be good...
...except you have to attach the wretched fixture to the ceiling (flush mount, of course), and the b*****ds who design these stupid things cut MASSIVE corners on the hardware. So, after messing with the stinking fixture for, oh, about two hours, I realized that the screws they wanted me to use to attach the fixture weren't long enough. So I used the screws that were actually meant to attach the mounting bracket to the box, since they were a little longer. I spent another hour trying to make THOSE screws work, cursing more and more with each passing moment. Part of the issue was the screws were not firmly attached anywhere (by design), so every time I tried to slip the fixture over the screws, they just mushed up into the bracket.
Finally about three or more hours after I started, I grabbed the screw that was closest to working, and headed off to the hardware store. Which, of course, was closed. So I went across town to the other hardware store, and about 10 minutes before they closed found a screw that I thought would help. I came home, totally faked the attachment process (only used one screw instead of two, but it's firmly attached rather than the "floating" one that the nincompoops wanted me to use, and so on), and finally, have a beautiful new fixture in my entryway.
But here's my question -- when I was a kid, I used to like to do models -- cars, boats, planes, Estes rockets, whatever. Regardless of they type, they were very, VERY clear on the level of difficulty of each model, so if you were a beginner, you didn't get in over your head.
Now, then, what are DIY projects but models for big people? Why the heck can't we have a level of difficulty on the outside of the boxes so that we can see and plan accordingly? Not that it would prevent us from getting in over our heads, but we might at least not undertake a much more difficult project if it's already after lunch!!!
My third project for the day had to get put off. But, it's plumbing, not electricity (replacing the innards of my toilet), and this will be my third take, so it shouldn't take me too long tomorrow.
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