Tom&Shelly
Senior Citizen Member
Shelly's and my big project for January is to get a small condo in Albuquerque ready for Shelly's Mom and sister to move into. (A bigger project will come a few weeks later, after they move, when we fix up her Mom's old house and sell it.)
Shelly's Mom has mild dementia, and so one of Shelly's sisters is living with her full time. (I call her "The Good Sister of the South", as opposed to the other two, "The Wicked Sisters of the East and West.") The condo is closer to us, so Shelly will be able to go down more often and help out. I'm just there to fix up the place; I try to help the coven when I can.
Since my mother-in-law's house has toggle switches, Shelly thinks it's a good idea to replace the rockers in the condo with old-fashioned toggles, as her mother will find them more familiar. That was my job today.
Mostly easy, except for the two 20-amp circuits in the bathrooms, with two lights, vent, and heater. They were a challenge, especially since the original switches evidently didn't have grounds (not required by code in the 1980's), and the homeowner or a handyman didn't do a very good job adding them when they changed out the original switches (probably toggles) with rockers. Daisy-chained loops of a single ground wire exceeding 360 degrees around some screws. Some places where the ground wire came off the switch at some point. And one where the wire nut fell off of the twisted ground wires.
I fixed all that, but in this one box pictured, it turns out the screw mounts in the bottom of the box were all stripped out. I didn't have any bigger screws, and left my box of flat toothpicks (my Dad's trick for partially filling a screw hole that is too large) at home. Looking around for something similar, I noticed my wooden ladder
Took my utility knife and made a few toothpicks! Worked just fine, and now I've left a small but significant part of me in that house: A piece of my step ladder and a small tribute to my (actual) father.
Tom
Shelly's Mom has mild dementia, and so one of Shelly's sisters is living with her full time. (I call her "The Good Sister of the South", as opposed to the other two, "The Wicked Sisters of the East and West.") The condo is closer to us, so Shelly will be able to go down more often and help out. I'm just there to fix up the place; I try to help the coven when I can.
Since my mother-in-law's house has toggle switches, Shelly thinks it's a good idea to replace the rockers in the condo with old-fashioned toggles, as her mother will find them more familiar. That was my job today.
Mostly easy, except for the two 20-amp circuits in the bathrooms, with two lights, vent, and heater. They were a challenge, especially since the original switches evidently didn't have grounds (not required by code in the 1980's), and the homeowner or a handyman didn't do a very good job adding them when they changed out the original switches (probably toggles) with rockers. Daisy-chained loops of a single ground wire exceeding 360 degrees around some screws. Some places where the ground wire came off the switch at some point. And one where the wire nut fell off of the twisted ground wires.
I fixed all that, but in this one box pictured, it turns out the screw mounts in the bottom of the box were all stripped out. I didn't have any bigger screws, and left my box of flat toothpicks (my Dad's trick for partially filling a screw hole that is too large) at home. Looking around for something similar, I noticed my wooden ladder
Took my utility knife and made a few toothpicks! Worked just fine, and now I've left a small but significant part of me in that house: A piece of my step ladder and a small tribute to my (actual) father.
Tom
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