Fixing The Light Options

[maxnmike]

Today we went to Homedepot to get a new kitchen light. The old one finally quit working. It had been being weird for a few months now,sometimes working sometimes not, taking a long time to come on. The old light was a 4 ft fluorescent light. The new one is a 14" round fluorescent light with a motion sensor.

So we get home and I get ready to replace the old light. First problem, all the overhead lights are on one circuit so when I turned off the breaker all the lights went out.

When I took the old light down I found out why it no longer worked, one of the wires was burnt through and all the rest were very brittle. The insulation was cracking and falling off the wire when I pulled them out of the box. There are 4 sets of wires going into the box. One from the switch, one going to the second light in the kitchen and two for the light circuit, one coming in and one going out.

I thought I could just pull the wires into the box and cut off the bad ends and start with better wire. Good idea, but first I had to go up into the attic and pull the staples so I could pull the wire. After I get the wire pulled into the box I start cutting the old ones one set at a time so as not to get them screwed up.

The old wires were just held together with electrical tape. When I tried to put the wires back together I found that I didn't have the right size wire nuts so I had to go to the store and buy some. After getting back from the store and standing on the ladder with my wife holding a flashlight (because now it's getting dark) I get the light to work.

A 15 minute job takes over 2 hours because people do stupid things instead of doing them right. I'm not too sure I want to look at any of the wires in the rest of the house.