Ever have one of those days where nothing seems to go right? I feel like that all the time since we moved into this house. It has been one thing after another (if anyone says “joys of owning a home”, I will murder you).
Our living room light switch is in a weird spot. For some reason they put it in the middle of a wall (I honestly have no clue what the reason was for this, but it sucks). I decided to get a new switch, one that could connect to Alexa and that we could just tell her to turn on the lights. I disconnected the old switch and the wires did not match at all, so I tried my best to figure it out. It did not work (more on that in a second).
I bought a cool ecobee thermostat, one that has Alexa built in. Went to connect it and guess what? My furnace is super old and does not have a motherboard, just some old wires. I decided not to do anything with it until I heard from someone.
I have also been replacing all of the outlets in the house and some of the light switches. They are all old and most of the outlets do not even hold a plug anymore. The switches are that awful old yellow. I finished up the living room outlets and flipped the breaker back on and POOF! The breaker trips and when I try to turn it back on there is a spark. So I called an electrician.
They came out the next day and basically I just did a bad job on one of the outlets. The ground wire was touching the metal box. Oops. They fixed it, then they looked at the light switch. They said that it would not work because I needed a neutral wire, but they did say that I had it hooked up right, just that it was not compatible.
Then they tried the thermostat. At first they thought it would work a certain way, but then after looking at the relay switch, they were weary of trying it out. They recommended calling an HVAC company. I just took the thermostat back. I figure at some point, we will probably need work on the furnace, might as well just do all of that stuff then.
In the dining room there is a dimmer switch, one of the ones with an old dial. Well the dial is broken. I decided to just get a new switch. Yep, I do not learn. I actually hooked it up right, but then came the hard part: getting all of that crap into the tiny metal box. I tried for over an hour, it would not fit. I was pretty pissed off. So I put the old one back on and before we paint the dining room, I will just swap out the box for a larger one. Preferably one of those newer, plastic ones. That should be easy, right? Seriously, I do not learn.
But enough about my failures…look at Logan, isn’t he adorable?
