How comfortable are you with electrical work? I used to be afraid to touch anything other than the circuit breaker whenever I blew a circuit. That's exactly what I thought I needed to do when setting up the guest room in our house a few days ago. Thankfully, I've had a few quick lessons from my Dad in how it all works. If not for that, I'm sure I would have called an electrician for a quick, easy fix. Instead, I fixed it myself and I feel very good about that.
After we finally emptied the room of boxes, I plugged the vacuum in so that I could clean before setting up the bed. I turned it on but then it quickly shut off. I plugged it in an outlet in another room to see if something was wrong with the vacuum but it turned on just fine. So I set it aside and went straight to the circuit breaker to flip the switch for the back bedroom back on. Uh oh. None of the circuits had blown. I felt a little panicky since this whole basement is the worst kind of homeowner's special and I started getting scared about what was going on behind the walls. Thankfully, some of the circuits are labeled well and one of them said "bathroom and back bedroom". This meant that it shared the same line as the bathroom so I checked the outlet in there and it was still working. So the first outlet beyond the bathroom was likely the culprit since everything is installed in a line from one outlet/light to the next. I went back to the breaker box and flipped that circuit off and got to work.
Bingo! There's a wire that's no longer connected. Uh oh! I have a problem...
First of all, this outlet looks like it's in terrible shape. When I pulled it out of the wall, there was drywall mud and paint everywhere. I cleaned the wires a bit but the hole where the wire came loose is damaged. If I push it in, it slides right back out. Also, this outlet is different than any other than I've seen before. I'm not sure how the wires are secured in there.
It looks like the metal piece is supposed to slide up and down to secure the wires, but I couldn't move it. Since I was replacing the whole thing I needed to do something to remove the wires so I grabbed a regular screwdriver and forced the metal piece down a bit. Thankfully, that loosened things enough to pull the wires out. If I hadn't been successful, I would have just cut the wires as close to the outlet as possible in order to not lose too much of the length.
Hooray for the new outlet! On the far left is the grounding wire that I wrapped around the green screw. In the middle are the two white wires and then on the right are the two black/live wires. In this style outlet, the wires are secured by the screws on the side. Once you slide the wires in as far as they go, you just tighten the screws to hold them in place. Then, if you're me, you tuck everything back into the wall, replace the outlet cover and cross your fingers as you walk back to the circuit breaker to flip the line back on. And, drumroll.......
Woot! I did it! The rest of the line works too. I can finish putting the room back together. Now where did I put those screws for the bed?
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