Wood's dad is MacGyver?...I had no idea.
Hooking a new light fixture is pretty easy. If I can do it, anyone can.
I think Wood and I had the same dad, except for us it was VW bugs and MGB's.
holy shit, wood, i think i married your dad- my husband used to have an old pontiac sunbird fastback in college that he used to have to pop the hood and play with wires and things to get it to start- every time. which is just the tip of the iceberg in this house. he really is macguyver.
dutch- from my husband, who plays with wires all too frequently to my horror- turn off the circuit to the room, then, when you remove the old fixture pay attention to which color wire is connected to which from lamp to wall. then you untwist old lamp wires, twist on new lamp wires and use something called a 'pigtail' (looks like a plastic pencap kinda) to slip over the wires and twist. you could use electrical tape as well, or even inbetween, but the pigtail should do the trick. he also recommends going to a small hardware store to purchase the pigtails with the fixture and ask the guy behind the counter to verify all this and show you exactly what to do- he said those guys are the best for that stuff, very nice and always helpful- he likes small places better than big chain stores for stuff like this, the owner-operators are usually pretty willing to help you out and show you what you need to do. good luck!
Geez, that is just TOO funny! Like father, like husband....
this didn't come up in last night's conversation, but on his Mexican honeymoon with Wood's mom, her dad drove a VW Beetle down a cement staircase to avoid the crowd of peasants chasing them.
I like to picture him driving down a Mayan temple's steps whenever I hear this story.
Does Wood's dad have a long lost brother in Oregon, I am pretty sure he is my father. I can not tell you how many times I had to call my mom and ask her to swing by the store on the way home to buy another fuse, as we had blown all the ones in the house.
I like the thought that Dutch's day is divided equally between running from packs of wild dogs and bidding on lamps on eBay. There's a nice balance there.
danish lamps, no less.
Suzuki, Renault, Yugo?!? So Wood's dad has a penchant for obscure foreign cars with reputations for very dubious reliability?
My husband rewires things all the time, he even had a dimmer phase where every light switch in the house was changed out to have a dimmer switch. All you need is the Sunset book "Electrical Wiring", and you will be set to rewire your entire house.
That shoelace idea is actually pretty good....and one I hadn't already thought of. I'm putting that into my person MacGuyver archives for future reference...
Well, Wood's dad sounds no odder than the entomologist Mighty Girl wrote about earlier today... Between his shoelace and her hair, those two would have made quite a pair.
GOD, I had just about forgotten about house fuses. With their little different colored circles on the outside, and windows to their status on the top. I remember always having to go fetch the box of fuses. WHY THE HELL DIDN'T WE KEEP THEM BY THE FUSE BOX, I ask you? Gah, who knows.
Get some of those little plastic twisty caps. You turn off the electricity, you twist the two black wires together, the two white wires together, ground the ground wire, and then on the black wires, and white wires, you twist a plastic cap thingie. Voila. Done.
You two people are so lovely.
Wood's dad sounds like an absolutely awesome guy. Really, anyone who drives a Yugo or operates his windshield wipers manually deserves a medal for coolness, but doing both??? The man is BETTER than McGyver.
And the VW bug story is priceless. My parents are boring, my dad had motorcycles and regular old 70's cars, and now he's got a Porsche. I'm going to talk to him about Yugos this weekend.
my first car was a chevy impala purchased at a police auction. during my first winter driving that car -- '86/'87 -- something busted in the heater or the fan that pushes heat into the car or whatever. my dad went to the auto parts store to get a replacement for the broken piece, only to discover that the piece was only available in a kit that contained several other pieces he didn't need. so he came home and wittled the part out of wood.
Wow, it sounds like you come from a family of scrappy Irish tinkers!
In addition to electrical tape, you might want some twist on wire connectors (aka "wire nuts"). 'Cause they're really easy.
Oh, like eighteen people already said the same thing I just did but used different words. That's what I get for skimming.
So what was the lamp? Let me guess. Based on the house, if it's Danish, probably a PH5. Am I right?
Emily, is it possible we are sisters? I also grew up in Oregon with a dad eerily similar to Wood's. We had a different car every week. My 2 favorites were the bright orange & green Gremlin and a Toyota Corona. I remember having to sit low in the back because there were no seatbelts while my dad drove us around to every junkyard in the I-5 corridor looking for parts. Ahhh misty water colored memories...
I busted out laughing at the image of Wood's Dad operating his wiper with a shoelace!
And I second what someone said about those books you can buy at Home Depot with titles like "Home Wiring". They are really easy to follow.
SB is somewhat like Dutch, the main difference being: he would have bid on the lamp and upon it's arrival put it in the back of the closet, hoping I would forget about it. Because he knows that when I discovered it hidden back there, that I would do the rewiring.
My wife has done all the wiring in our lamp situations. I have a fear of ignorance mixed with electricity.
I'm going to chime in here too and say that wiring a lamp is a lot easier than it sounds... we bought a vintage one (Danish, in fact) that I watched our landlord install and then felt embarrassed that he had come all the way over to do something so easy. It's literally only a matter of turning off the fuse and twisting some wires together.
Also, the story about driving down a cement staircase to avoid being pursued by peasants is amazing... I love young-parent stories like that.
Holy crap, woman! If I was ever going to be trapped in the woods, or if there was a nuclear holocaust, I would TOTALLY want to be off somewhere with you. You learned improvisation from the master.
Why does the lamp I rewired blow a fuse everytime I plug it in? Is that safe? Should I see a professional? You make it sound so easy, but, I CAN'T MAKE IT WORK.
That is some HOTT pillow talk. My husband's knees would buckle just reading it.
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