This past week now that I have use of my left hand I decided to do a few things around the house I've been wanting to do. I've never been the most handy husband. Fixing things meant breaking more things
But a friend of mine has been redoing a bedroom for his son-to-be and I've learned alot in a short time and gained alot of confidence from him, so I decided to be a bit ambitious and get more positive about my abilities.
The first thing I did was install a programmable thermostat in our finished basement. The manual one we had wasn't working well, and it gave me an excuse to start with something. That went well and now I don't freeze to death in the basement. It was a pretty simple job, but when you look under a picture in our living room and see the result of me trying to hang a clock, you'll understand
The next thing was I wanted to install a dimmer switch on our fan/light in the living room. This would be my first time ever working with electricity. I learned most of what I knew from my friend and found a video tutorial on this particular job online and that boosted my confidence. It went pretty well. A few things were tricky like connecting 2 different kinds of ground wire together and putting on the switch plate (I had to drill through the metal outlet box to affix the screws unfortunately), but I"m happy to say we now have mood lighting and the house hasn't burned down yet
The last project was alittle tougher. Since we've moved into our house we had an outlet that didn't work in the living room. I eventually figured out that the reason why it doesn't work is because it's hooked to one of two light switches on the wall next to it, and one of the switches doesn't work. This is where I almost got electrocuted *lol* I took off the switch plate and saw that everything seemed to have been hooked up correctly. I tightened the connections and it still didn't work. So I had a voltage tester that my father in law lent me and I wanted to make sure there was even power going to the switch. I touched one end of the meter to the metal outlet box and one to the switch terminals...nothing. I decided to try it on the working switch just to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong. I touched the outlet box again and as soon as I touched a terminal "SNAP! *spark*" and the circuit breaker tripped. Scared the hell out of me. My friend and my dad figured that the switch probably wasn't grounded...well I wish I had known that before. I gave up on trying to figure out what was wrong with the switch, deciding that we'd never use it anyway, changed my underwear and found out how to disconnect the switch from the outlet and cap off the unused wire safely. Now we have a working outlet but I still want to know why the switch doesn't work. But I'm not going near it for a while until I seek more advice on how to diagnose it safer *lol*
The next thing I want to do involves plumbing. We have a leaking toilet shutoff that drips every once in a while. Instead of paying a plumber $100 I thought I'd give it a try myself. It involves soldering which I've never done, but I've done my research and found alot of videos online showing how to do it. The interesting thing is, apparently it's technically illegal in massachusetts to do plumbing yourself. I can understand for major jobs, but technically I can't even fix a leaky faucet without calling a plumber. Yeah, I'll be spending $80 to do that..right.
So I'm really happy that I've learned how to do more things around here and got more confidence. It just shows what a change in attitude can do for you
The first thing I did was install a programmable thermostat in our finished basement. The manual one we had wasn't working well, and it gave me an excuse to start with something. That went well and now I don't freeze to death in the basement. It was a pretty simple job, but when you look under a picture in our living room and see the result of me trying to hang a clock, you'll understand
The next thing was I wanted to install a dimmer switch on our fan/light in the living room. This would be my first time ever working with electricity. I learned most of what I knew from my friend and found a video tutorial on this particular job online and that boosted my confidence. It went pretty well. A few things were tricky like connecting 2 different kinds of ground wire together and putting on the switch plate (I had to drill through the metal outlet box to affix the screws unfortunately), but I"m happy to say we now have mood lighting and the house hasn't burned down yet
The last project was alittle tougher. Since we've moved into our house we had an outlet that didn't work in the living room. I eventually figured out that the reason why it doesn't work is because it's hooked to one of two light switches on the wall next to it, and one of the switches doesn't work. This is where I almost got electrocuted *lol* I took off the switch plate and saw that everything seemed to have been hooked up correctly. I tightened the connections and it still didn't work. So I had a voltage tester that my father in law lent me and I wanted to make sure there was even power going to the switch. I touched one end of the meter to the metal outlet box and one to the switch terminals...nothing. I decided to try it on the working switch just to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong. I touched the outlet box again and as soon as I touched a terminal "SNAP! *spark*" and the circuit breaker tripped. Scared the hell out of me. My friend and my dad figured that the switch probably wasn't grounded...well I wish I had known that before. I gave up on trying to figure out what was wrong with the switch, deciding that we'd never use it anyway, changed my underwear and found out how to disconnect the switch from the outlet and cap off the unused wire safely. Now we have a working outlet but I still want to know why the switch doesn't work. But I'm not going near it for a while until I seek more advice on how to diagnose it safer *lol*
The next thing I want to do involves plumbing. We have a leaking toilet shutoff that drips every once in a while. Instead of paying a plumber $100 I thought I'd give it a try myself. It involves soldering which I've never done, but I've done my research and found alot of videos online showing how to do it. The interesting thing is, apparently it's technically illegal in massachusetts to do plumbing yourself. I can understand for major jobs, but technically I can't even fix a leaky faucet without calling a plumber. Yeah, I'll be spending $80 to do that..right.
So I'm really happy that I've learned how to do more things around here and got more confidence. It just shows what a change in attitude can do for you
