![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I love it when things work out like this
Dec. 1st, 2011 09:27 pmThe light fixture over our dining room has been giving us trouble for months. We'd flip the switch and the lights would flash on and then off. We replaced the bulbs, and even brand new bulbs would do this. If we flipped the switch several times, eventually they'd come on and stay on.
The light fixture has five bulbs in it. Over the past few months, the number of bulbs that would come on even after repeated flicking of the switch dropped from four to three to two. Finally, last week, there were mornings when it refused to turn on entirely.
It's December. In Minnesota. I cannot read my newspaper in the dark. Enough was enough.
We know the wiring in our house is very old and problematic, but we've never had enough money to deal with it. We still don't have the money to deal with it, but this was ridiculous. So I called around to the neighbors to ask for a reference for an electrician, and one of them suggested that I call our neighbor across the alley. "He just had a bunch of remodeling done."
When I called John, he offered instead to stop by at my house to look at the fixture himself. He had a tool that would check for wiring problems. This was surprising, but highly gratifying, and of course I said yes. When he stopped by tonight and used his handy gizmo, he quickly determined that yes, power was getting to the switch, and going through the wires coming from the ceiling. He squinted up at the light and said diffidently, "Do you by any chance have any incandescent light bulbs?"
I blinked, surprised. We had been using compact fluorescent lights. I found a couple in the closet, so I took them out, swapped out the bulbs, and voila. Let there be light!
Huzzah. I don't have to pay for an electrician to come to redo the wiring in my dining room. Don't you love it when you're worrying about a big repair bill that instead turns out to be an easy fix?
Thanks, John!
The light fixture has five bulbs in it. Over the past few months, the number of bulbs that would come on even after repeated flicking of the switch dropped from four to three to two. Finally, last week, there were mornings when it refused to turn on entirely.
It's December. In Minnesota. I cannot read my newspaper in the dark. Enough was enough.
We know the wiring in our house is very old and problematic, but we've never had enough money to deal with it. We still don't have the money to deal with it, but this was ridiculous. So I called around to the neighbors to ask for a reference for an electrician, and one of them suggested that I call our neighbor across the alley. "He just had a bunch of remodeling done."
When I called John, he offered instead to stop by at my house to look at the fixture himself. He had a tool that would check for wiring problems. This was surprising, but highly gratifying, and of course I said yes. When he stopped by tonight and used his handy gizmo, he quickly determined that yes, power was getting to the switch, and going through the wires coming from the ceiling. He squinted up at the light and said diffidently, "Do you by any chance have any incandescent light bulbs?"
I blinked, surprised. We had been using compact fluorescent lights. I found a couple in the closet, so I took them out, swapped out the bulbs, and voila. Let there be light!
Huzzah. I don't have to pay for an electrician to come to redo the wiring in my dining room. Don't you love it when you're worrying about a big repair bill that instead turns out to be an easy fix?
Thanks, John!