So I had a fairly large list of the things I wanted to get done yesterday and I think the only thing that really got done was the bathroom getting painted. When I remove all the tape I'll post a pic. One of the things I wanted to get done was to get the jacuzzi ready for use. Not thinking it all through very clearly, we filled the jacuzzi with water from the garden hose....which is ice cold up here. I turned on the heater and several hours later nothing had happened. Gwen mentioned we should've used hot water from the washing machine hook up. But then we figured that if we had used hot water, we'd never know if the jacuzzi heater worked or not, until it got cold I guess. So we tried turning on the jets and letting them run for awhile. Nothing seemed to work. It was pretty depressing. While messing around with it, I noticed when the bottom latch wasn't fully closed, the jets wouldn't work. So I shut it completely and put a paint can in front of it (I think the rug under it is holding it slightly open...not relative at this point).
I layed awake all night due to being freezing on my air mattress, noises all over the house (my monitor and refrigerator as it turned out) and wondering what I should do about the jacuzzi. I was bummed because jacuzzis are expensive and I can't afford a new one right now. Then I went to wondering what to make of the room without the jacuzzi....then to how on earth I was going to get it out of there and where I was supposed to throw it out. It was a rough night.
In the morning I sulked out to the jacuzzi room to test the temperature, without much hope of it being warm.... and it was!!!! So now my jacuzzi is nice and hot, and the jets work, and....I can't get the stupid bromine tablets to dissolve in there. What the heck? I had them in one of those little floaty things and that didn't seem to work, so I just dumped them onto the bottom of the jacuzzi. I'll check it in a bit, but right now there's no bromine showing up on my test strip. Errrr....
I also locked myself out of the house this morning which I saw coming and did nothing to prevent it. Trying to get back in, a buddy of mine and I cracked the bathroom window (which was really old and needed to be replaced anyway) before finding out that the kitchen window hadn't been closed all the way and opened right up for him to crawl in. Geezo. This was after we crawled up on the roof to try to crawl through the attic vents.
So today I put the final coat of paint on the bathroom, sealed the wood stove flue that is allowing all my warm air to escape out into the lovely town of Montague (my woodstove will arrive at a later time, for now there's just a hole in the roof basically). My buddy and I moved the bigger items over to my new place and I set out to replace my front porch lantern. Here's what it used to look like:
I figure it's about 80 years old. Notice how the bulbs are just sort of lying there on the bottom of the lantern. Classy. So I had to upgrade, which is a big reason why Home Depot was such an expensive trip. If you notice, this lantern is plugged in to an outlet and hanging rather simply. I figured it would be a 5 minute job to switch one out. So I bought a beautiful one at Home Depot and was only slightly concerned that I didn't see any plugs on them. I figured Home Depot didn't want it to look all mangled with cords all over the place. This was on my very large list of things to do today.
So I grabbed my (new) ladder and tools and set up on the porch. As I pulled everything out of the box, I realized that the end of it just had an open copper wire instead of a plug. This was bad. One thing I don't do is electrical stuff. That stuff can kill you. Seriously. It's bad juju. I looked at my bare wire, and I looked at the outlet on the ceiling. I decided I better buck up and learn how to fix my house. I've been told that when you turn off power to an outlet, there's no electricity flowing to it, therefore it cannot jump out and bite you. I have never believed this for a minute. The only time an outlet or wire cannot shock you dead is when it is completely cut off physically from all connections and laying in the street by itself. Even then you probably shouldn't go sticking anything metal into the outlet. Just to be sure. Like I said, electricity kills.
But there I was, staring at my bare copper wire and an old electrical outlet. Well, here we go, I thought. So I climbed up on the ladder and started taking apart the electrical outlet. I have a very very simplistic knowledge of how these things work...I also have a new Home Depot Home Improvement book, as well as instructions for the lantern. And a few little tools. And some guts...ok, not really a whole lot of those. As I got the thing disassembled it revealed extremely old wires connected to the outlet. I tried getting them out to no avail. I followed the directions in the Home Improvement book but the wires would not release. I was going to have to cut them. This posed a serious problem due to my belief that all wires are indeed live even if you turn off the power supply to them. I was going to have to cut into electrical wires with a pair of metal wire cutters and most likely fall to my death onto the front porch with no one there to witness it and initiate CPR. I took a couple deep breaths, steadied my hand and cut the wire.
Nothing happened. I was safe! I took another big breath and with a little more confidence, cut the second wire. To my knowledge I am still alive. I went to work putting the stupid thing together which very well could've been put together before I bought it. I gained absolutely nothing by having to assemble it and only got tired and cranky and slightly sore all over. Remember, I was planning on spending all of 5 minutes switching this thing out. 2 hours later it was done, and my new next door neighbor had been staring at me for the last 15 minutes of it. To my knowledge she never heard the profanity that I was mumbling the whole time. Yes, I managed to remove an elctrical outlet and wire a hanging lantern to it. And when I went back inside to turn on the light switch, the most amazing and unexpected thing happened: the light came on. Was I absolutely estatic and proud of myself? No, not really. I had a feeling come over me very similar to when I finished my first marathon. I was too tired and frustrated to be excited, I was just relieved to be done. After I put away all my tools and ladder, I went back out to take this picture, and only then did I start to feel a wee bit of pride.
Go ahead, scroll back up and look at the original again, then come back and look at this one. Notice the lack of electrical outlet. That's because there is none. That's because I rewired the damn thing. Me. With electrical wires. And I didn't die. And it's beautiful. Even my neighbor Sally said so. Shazam!
No comments:
Post a Comment