Dad Saves the Day

I botched it. I really botched it, and I had no idea how I was going to be able to fix it.

A week ago, while we were getting ready for all of the family to come, I decided to replace the fan light receptacle in Blake’s room where my sister and her girls were going to be sleeping. The fan box was sagging into the room because it was no longer able to hold the fan up like it should. I didn’t like the idea of the fan possibly falling on my niece's head while she was visiting, so I set to work.

What I thought would take an hour or so ended up taking longer. Much, much longer.

I got a new receptacle box that attaches to a bar which wedges between the ceiling joists, just like I was supposed to. Then I proceeded to take the fan down. No problem. With Seth’s help, we had the fan down in minutes. After that was when the annoyances started.

There were four sets of wires (with one white, one black, and one ground each) that were all coming through different holes in the old box. I had to untangle all of those wires before I could remove the old box. OK. Only about five to ten minutes. Then I had to take the old box support out. Slightly annoying, but not too bad.

After that, I spent almost 20 minutes inadvertently knocking down bits of ceiling and insulation just to locate the ceiling joists that I had to attach the new support bar to for the new box. Then I had to install the new bar. Another 20 minutes with more bits of debris.

When I attached the new box, I found that, because I was threading the wires through the top holes, the wires ended up being really short and hard to work with. Fine. I decided to add splices (extension wires). Finally I was ready to attach the fan. I replaced the fan mount and Seth held up the fan while I tried to connect the fan wires. Yah, right. Those wires did not want to connect. I had all of the blacks in one clump and all of the whites in another. The wire nuts just didn’t want to screw on. Both my and Seth’s arms were getting exhausted, so we quit for the time being.

That night, Kristi and her girls showed up, needing the room to sleep in, so we waited until the next day to try again. Same results. Fine! We decided that maybe we should just get a regular light for the room instead.

Seth and I left the following morning for our anniversary vacation, apologizing to my sister for not having fixed the light. The day after we got back, I went out and bought a pair of flush mount ceiling lights. By mid day, I had everything hooked up and went to flip the breaker switch.

Zap! I somehow shorted out the circuit. I turned it off and tried again. Still no current. What had I done wrong?

Sigh. I tried rewiring again that evening. No luck. I was out of ideas, and was about ready to call an electrician. But there was still some hope. My Dad had come out to visit us with the others.

So, when Dad came home from his romp in Denver, I asked if he could take a look at it. Within a matter of minutes, he was able to tell me part of what I had done wrong. One of the white wires (the one coming from the light switch) was actually a black. So he separated that from the other whites and did something else before hooking up the light fixture. Yay! The circuit was working! I hadn't blown it completely! But when we went to flip the switch to the light, we got nothing. Absolutely nothing. The rest of the lights on that circuit worked, but not the one we were working with.

Dad undid his work and spent the rest of the evening (until the kids went to bed) trying to figure out the wiring, and explaining it to me, with no success.

He worked on it all the next morning too, until all of the other visitors were ready to leave for Utah. He had removed the new box and was testing all of the wires. No success. He felt awful that he hadn’t been able to fix it for me. I told him it was OK. I was the one who had broken it in the first place. It was my fault, not his. I could tell he still wanted to fix it for me, but he had to leave. Everyone was waiting.

Even so, Dad had given me hope. I now knew that one of the white wires had to be separate from the others and that I hadn’t completely fried the circuit. So, I thought I’d have one more go at it before calling in the pros.

This time, instead of threading the wires through the top of the box, I pulled them in from the sides. That gave me a good extra inch of wire to work with all around. Good. Then I separated that one white/black wire, hooked the remaining three whites together, connected all of the ground wires together, and connected all of the blacks together. Finally, I attached the light fixture, white wire to the clump of whites and black wire to the white/black wire. And what do you know. It worked!!!!!! It actually worked.

I was so excited that I had to call Dad up right then and there and tell him that we did it. I could have never figured it out without his help.

Thank You Dad.