If you've ever attempted any home improvement project, then you know it is usually little better than a comedy of errors (just look at Tim Allen...he made a lot of money with a show that at least a few people found amusing).
I have found, however, that these projects tend more toward the Tragic rather than Comic. Here is my Tale of Woe:
We have a crappy old house. It will never be on This Old House; Bob Villa wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Since it's ours, we are inclined to do things to it which make less crappy and in this case it happens to be the lighting in the entry hallway. The existing lighting was installed sometime in the 1930's or 40's...It must have been the cheapest they could find, or maybe they built them themselves out of old tin cans and glass shards.They had to go.
Unless you are really handy or a General Contractor, electricity scares the bejesus out of you, or at least it should. I figured that would be the biggest hurdle, dealing with electrical cables, but I was wrong. To get started, I scurried down next to the garage, under the neighbor's juniper bush(don't ask) and killed power to the house. Went back inside, climbed the little step ladder and removed one of the light fixtures. I had to snip the wires because they were actually soldered into the bulb socket! Once that was done, I stood there and tried to look like I knew what I was doing. This was, in theory, a simple task. All I had to do now was attach the new fixture's mounting plate to the old electrical box in the ceiling. I gently moved one of the old wires out of my way so I could make room for the new fixture...the insulation crumbled like feta cheese in my hands. Great...this doesn't happen in the directions in the box. I would have to go to the hardware store and consult the Handyman Oracle to figure out how to fix this.
(More to come...)
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