Please Don't Let My House Burn Down

I start my new job on Monday. I’m down to my last few days of freedom during my 7 week sabbatical. I’ve been trying to do all of my favorite activities along with getting things in order on the home front. Last week, after the masking tape peeled off a significant amount of paint from my newly painted basement paneling, I did some touch ups with a small detailing brush (like ¾” wide) using one coat of primer and one layer of top coat. It looks pretty good. And I still can’t get over how darned happy the walls look. It’s like, I go down to my basement and my walls smile at me now.

All the electric outlets in my basement were black, both the plugs and covers. I wanted them to be white and I didn’t want to just paint them. So that meant I would have to replace them all, which involves fooling around with wires.

I don’t have much experience with electrical work and frankly, electricity is a terrifying mystery to me (yeah C in Circuits. My fear of electricity began as a high schooler. More than once, I electrocuted myself by sticking a knife in the toaster to try and fish my bagel out. Admittedly, that was pretty dumb on my part.). So in the name of learning experiences, I made a deal with myself. After reading a couple relevant pages of my Home Improvement book, I decided to buy a voltage detector, one new white outlet and one new outlet cover and attempt to swap out one of the black outlets in my basement. If I was successful, I would do the rest, and if I wasn’t, I would stew on it for more time until I got enough nerve to try again.

I spent some happy time at Lowes, got my supplies (along with a gorgeous toilet seat!) and set out to play an exhilarating game of “Don’t Electrocute Myself.” I figured out which circuit I needed to turn off, tested it with my voltage detector, and then carefully and methodically replaced the black outlet with the white one. It actually was an embarrassingly simple task but was delightfully satisfying as well. Following that success, I headed to Home Depot, and bought the rest of the supplies that I would need to swap out all of the outlets and covers and planned to finish the project today.

I went to tackle the remainder of my project and none of the outlet swaps were as easy as the first one. I had to go to the hardware store twice – once for needle nose pliers and once for copper ground wire, which I broke during one of the swap outs. Home Depot published a book I refer to as the Home Improvement Bible (Ch3 pg 16 “Through Home Depot I can do all things”). In this Bible, they show pictures of how NOT to do the job and that was how the people before me had hooked up the outlets. ARGH.

The other fun part was that the 8 outlets were on 4 different circuits. It worked out alright because I was able to keep moving the lights and CD player (love my new music from Naspter!).

In conclusion, any day to play with my screwdriver is a good day. I just have a lot of cuts on my hands. And I hope my house doesn’t catch on fire.