Wednesday night my lights and television flickered. They stayed out for about 15 seconds. Then came back on. Then back off for another 5-10 seconds. Then they were fine. I thought that was a little weird, since only some of the lights went out, but kind of shrugged my shoulders and was content with the fact that the lights and t.v. were back on. Our regularly scheduled Olympics watching could resume.
Thursday night they went out again. First for a few seconds, and then permanently. Shit. We (my boyfriend and I) spent quite a while that night trying to fix it. We checked the fuse box and nothing looked blown. I learned my lesson the hard way the last time I had an electical issue, so we did a thorough check. We switched out every single one with no luck. We made sure everything was unplugged from all outlets and made sure all lights were switched off and tried again. We tried to determine which fuse(s) controlled the areas of the house that were out. We didn't really know what else to do after that. So my boyfriend called his dad and he offered to come over to take a look. I told him not to come because it was getting late and I didn't want him to have to run over on a moments notice. It wasn't an emergency. At least some outlets in each room were working, except the upstairs bathroom. The garage wasn't working either but we could just open and close it manually for the next day. We had heat and hot water so I decided it could wait.
I should mention that I come from a family that is not very handy. My parents hire someone for even the most trivial of home improvemnent projects/fixes. That's just what they choose to do. As someone who grew up in a household with this mentatlity I also am not very handy, and know next to nothing about how to fix things around the house. Had my parents been handy I think I would have been fairly handy as well. I am interested in learning new things, and I love feeling a sense of accomplishment when I can do something myself. For my boyfriend, it is a very different story. His father, as well as all of his uncles and even some cousins, are some of the most handy people around. They seem to know how to fix anything and own every tool known to man. They know all about electrical systems, how to finish basements, plumbing, just about anything you can think of. A little over a year ago the tracking system on my garage door broke and my boyfriend's dad ran over to home depot to get the necessary parts (without even looking at my garage) and had it fixed in an hour or so. My boyfriend had a perfect opportunity to learn from his dad and become super handy as well, but didn't have a huge interest in it.
Anyway, Friday night his dad came over with his bucket of tools and equipment and went to work diagnosing the problem. We tore apart half the light sockets and fixtures in my house and we learned a lot and figured out what the overall problem was, but we couldn't pinpoint exactly where it was. After several hours we called it a night. Early Saturday afternoon we went at it again. We were more systematic in our approach going light socket by light socket determinging exactly how the house was wired and essentially put on our x-ray glasses to see through the wall to see where the wires were coming from and going to. After a couple of hours we found the culprit. An outlet in the master bedroom and overloaded, and actually looked burned. I am very lucky there wasn't an electrical fire.
Once we found the culprit my boyfriend's dad knew exactly what to do. We ran to home depot to get a knew outlet and re-wired it. We also re-wired another outlet in the living room -- changed the 2-prong outlet to a 3-prong one and added a ground wire. In about 10 minutes we were back in business.
I learned so much through this experience. I am much less intimidated by electrical work now. I have plans to go through and switch over some of the other remaining 2-prong outlets and ground them (something I had no idea was so easy to do) and switch out one of the light fixtures in the kitchen.
It was certainly a satisfying experience, and I am incredibly grateful that I don't have to worry about calling an electrician on Monday, missing work so that I'd be home when someone came, and paying someone what I would guess would be at least a few hundred dollars. I feel satisfaction, relief, and I feel smater. Also gratitude to my boyfriend's father for all his help. To show my appreciation I took everyone out for a nice dinner. It doesn't really cover my debt for hijacking his Friday night and Saturday afternoon, but it was the best I could come up with. I also plan on baking some brownies from scratch this week and sending those over. He said the dinner wasn't necessary, but really, it was.
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