by Right now…
…I am still perplexed about the chandelier in our dining room. About six months ago, it just decided to quit working. No bad bulbs, no problems with the circuit breaker it’s on — it just wouldn’t turn on. We added it to the list of stuff we couldn’t afford to fix right now and moved on.
Until last night. We were at Bocktown for Wednesday’s big storm, but when we got home, we found no problems — power was on, just the usually teeny leak in the basement, cat cowering under furniture, light in the dining room was on…
Wait. What?
“…light in the dining room was on.”
I actually did that double-take when I walked in the door, stepped into the living room after taking off my soggy shoes and saw light coming from the dining room. Mrs. Crappy had actually gone upstairs without noticing the glow.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. We turned it off again almost immediately, thinking that it wasn’t the electrical fairies who magically made the light work again and that instead we have a short that decided to un-short itself last night and no, you know, burn the house down.
I’m glad to have the option to use it again, kind of. But the dining room light is still on the list of stuff we can’t afford to fix — it’s just a higher priority now.
Uncle Crappy 
Maybe your house is haunted, yo.
LikeLike
I’d take “haunted” over “expensive electrical problem” any day of the week.
LikeLike
Way to discredit Mr. Miles. Maybe he fixed it.
LikeLike
Miles is good at a lot of things — eating, napping, shedding, killing mice that have been stuffed with catnip, waking us up early on weekends — but home improvements are beyond his skill set.
LikeLike
Is it the switch, Mike? Cheap fix. I’ve got a buggy switch in my living room.
LikeLike
That could be. There are two switches for the light; maybe I’ll wait until I’m unsupervised at home and investigate.
LikeLike
Totally disagree re: haunting vs. expensive problem. But you probably knew that.
Our kitchen light went out during the storm and won’t come back on, so I think clearly you stole our kitchen power and are hiding it in your dining room.
LikeLike
Given that we weren’t home when whatever happened happened, I’m going to deny responsibility for the loss of power in your kitchen light. Unless Miles is much more talented than I give him credit for.
LikeLike
Mike, unless you have a problem along the circuit somewhere, it’s probably one of three connections, swith, circuit breaker box or the light fixture. I’d check the two easy ones first then if you can get a step ladder and see how hard it is to bring her down. I know that old wiring gets shaky (as I procrastinate replacing my ceiling fan since Christmas haha)
LikeLike
If you want to experiment with a definitely working (but horribly ugly) chandelier, holler. There’s one sitting in my basement collecting dust.
For the record, though, I think Mr. Miles went and earned his keep.
LikeLike
My guess is a bad switch, but sometimes on a double switch circuit, if one switch isn’t thrown all the way in one direction or another, it will not permit power through the circuit regardless of the postion of the other switch.
LikeLike