Can the Electrical Stuff Get Worse?

The old family fake Tiffany lamp needs support/hanging hardware only a specialist can provide. The new "brightest" kitchen fluorescent bulbs seem dim.  The newly installed "bottom of the stair" light is newly-detached  so that the upper one works properly again and there is no light at the bottom.

Now the hall circular fluorescent light has suddenly failed.  The online guidelines said to "replace the bulb".  Did that, no improvement.  Then it said "replace the starter".  Did that, and after a quarter hour struggling with getting it set into the connections, didn't help.

And seriously, after a quarter hour holding your hands up not even doing anything, see how you feel.   There is an old trick about betting someone they can't hold a feather at arm's length for 10 minutes.  The sucker thinks "feather", but the problem is the weight of the ARM, LOL!  My arms were exhausted just holding them straight up from the stepladder.

I DID finally get the damn starter installed eventually, and it had no effect.  The light lit at about 10% and flickered.

To temporarily replace the misfunctioning hallway light, I took a floorlamp and put a screw-in fluorescent bulb and set the floor lamp on a narrow table.  It's just me here, so I can live with that a week.  But I had to replace a regular bulb in the basement light from where I took the screw-in fluorescent one out.

The base of the bulb broke off.  So I had to turn off the circuit breaker to that circuit so I could use pliers to unscrew the broken base.  I couldn't read the circuit breaker labels without my glasses. So upstairs I went to find them.  Back downstairs I went.

Oh, its the #13 circuit which I now see is printed SIDEWAYS which is why I couldn't make any sense of it without my glasses.  So I go to get my pliers out of my stupid fancy tray tool cabinet.  Which is LOCKED because I had contractors in the house and my friend had to take legal action because HIS contractors stole some of the same fancy tools I have.

So where did I put the keys?  Because I don't have a regular place to put them because I almost never have to lock the stupid tool cabinet.  I stand around upstairs trying to find them and THERE they are on the hook where the pizza paddle lives.  Of course, where else would they be.  Well at least I found them.

So I look in the tool chest for the best thing to spread inside the broken bulb socket (remember that?) and discover that the best tool for the job was sitting on my workbench the whole time.  I slowly spread the tin snips out in the broken socket (after double-checking the power was off) and slowly remove the broken bulb base.

I replace the bulb with a new one.  Hurray, I'm back to where I was an hour earlier!  This is actually progress.  I've already made the several required mistakes, and fixed them!!!

The new bulb is "oh so gently" screwed in.  The circuit breaker is set back "ON", it works!  Hurray...

And I had the damn kitchen fixture to deal with.  The electrician was going to replace the ballast but asked if I had any new 4' fluorescent T-12 bulbs .  I did actually, plant-grow bulbs for my garden-seedling light stand.  They worked.  The kitchen looked HORRIBLE, but they did work.  So after the electricians left, I went to buy better tube bulbs.  I selected "daylight" because I wanted bright light in the kitchen.  I do a lot of food-prep, so I figured "daylight" was good.

They were not good.  "Daylight" bulbs are rather blaringly bluish.  The light is bright but funny inside.  SO, I went out and bought what the store chart said was right for "kitchens".  The lumens output is less, but the color is better.

My addition of a hinge to one end of the 4' light fixture is the smartest thing I've done all year.  I've had to get at the tube bulbs a half dozen times just in this month and trying to be on both sides of a 4' fixture at the same time as one person is a real struggle.  Even the electricians admired the idea.  I tried the new "warm white" bulbs and it was like I remembered the lighting had been!  I could even put the diffuser panel back in and the lighting was still as good when I tilted the fixture cover back up by the hinge and attached it at the other end.

So there are 2 working fixtures of 4 again.  As lame as that is, I feel like I had a major success today.  That's actually pretty pathetic. but sometimes 50% is good.

I'll get the other 50% done next week or the week after, after bringing the fake tiffany lmp to a repair shop 40 miles away, buying a new hallway lamp for the electricians to install, having them install the fake tiffany lamp in the top of the stairs and fishing wires through the walls and across the attic.

I dont EVEN want to imagine the problems they will discover.  But at least the last electrician specified the details of the wire fishing and attic support and wrote that the work WAS ALREADY PAID FOR BY THE QUOTE IN THE FIRST PAID BOTCHED JOB!

I may get out of this yet without the house burning down by bad electrical circuits.

25 years ago, when I moved in, I would have done this myself.  But I'm not crazy-confident-brave 36 years old anymore.  I've zapped myself too many times doing amateur electrical work.   I nearly killed myself twice, surviving only because I wasn't grounded.  I'm not touching electricity anymore.

Now I just hope I don't kill myself gardening somehow.