Electrical Issues

I have had it with dealing with the crappy wiring in our house.  As part of the remodeling process, I was going to update all the electrical fixtures in the kitchen from ivory to white in color.  Well that is easier said than done.  The first problem is that none of the outlets in this house are grounded.  There are some that show up as grounded when you put one of those outlet checkers in the plug, but that is because I did something called a “bootleg ground”.  I stumbled upon it, and thought that was the way that “self-grounding” outlets were supposed to be wired.  After all, self-grounding would imply grounded to itself, right?  Well when I replaced them about 10 years ago, I grounded it to itself after some experimenting.  In researching it now, I have come to learn that is a big no-no.  It will trick the inspector who may be just sticking one of those plug checkers in to see if the outlet is grounded, but it is not the right way to do it, and in fact, is extremely dangerous.  So note to self…  Check all the outlets in the house and remove any bootleg grounds as soon as possible.

So, that being said…  I replaced a couple of my outlets with GFCI outlets.  Simple enough.  Then I went to update the switch for the overhead light.  It was an old 3-way switch and I believe that the wiring the people did who lived in the house before us, had things all messed up.  The result was one of the two switches on the 3-way was not even working as I couldn’t get it to operate without tripping the breaker.  Now, I ended up putting the new switch in, and connecting each wire, one at a time as I pulled it off the old switch, but every time I turned it on, the breaker tripped.  I spent 4 hours trying different hookups at the light, at the switch… nothing would work.  So I finally just took the light out of the circuit, capped off the wires, and made the decision to call an electrician to fix things.  I’m telling you….  Electricity and me do not get along!  It is a wonder I haven’t started an electrical fire!  Updates as they become available.