This story requires a little setup… a month and a half ago Tasha had her first open house for Longaberger. In preparation for this event, we painted and refinished our kitchen, at what time I was charged with changing the light switch covers and light switches.
No big deal, I did so. About three weeks ago, I notice when I’m turning the light out by the back door that the plate cover has a little charge that can only be detected by the back of my finger. No big deal, I think, I’ll deal with it later. Today was that day. I took off the plate cover to look at the wiring job and saw that two things were amiss… one, the ground wire on one of the three switches had become loose and was lightly touching the box. I turned off the power, tightened it and then turnt he power back on.
OK, that seems a little better. I notice that the light switch that controls the hall light (there are two, located at different places in the house) was jutting out a little from the wall. I push it back in with my finger and POW! sparks fly out and the hallway goes dark. I tripped a circuit somehow. Then I realized why… I had wired the ground and black wires backwards. FUCK.
I took the covers off of the other dual control switches in the area, sure enough, I had screwed it up. My electrician buddy said that I’m lucky I always had shoes on when I was turning off the lights at night or I could’ve probably hurt myself pretty bad. Not to mention the fire risk that I have put my house and family at. I gotta get professionals to do things like this. Yikes.
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