Just a little shout-out to an amazing product that you never knew you needed: outlet spacers. Basically they're little plastic stackable spacers that you wedge between an outlet and the electrical box that, when installed properly, makes sure that the outlet sits at exactly the right distance from the wall, and sits there securely. So you never have to deal with oddly sunken, squishy, off-kilter outlets and switches with cracked cover plates ever again.
Fucking miracles.
Also I'd like to give a shout out to brushed stainless steel outlet/switch face plates. Every garage in the world has an outlet or switch with a cracked, chipped or broken faceplate. Every garage in the world but mine, that is.
7 comments:
Cool! I didn't know those existed, but I can see their awesomeness! When I bought a white plate for here, I splurged on the crack-resistant nylon ones. I still need to map all the outlets and fixtures to the breaker box… it's a pain running up and down all the stairs until I've found the right one for the repair I want to do.
A good tip I heard once is to plug in a radio to the circuit you want to find and crank the volume to max, then you can go over to the breaker panel and just listen for when it cuts out.
I've heard that too. But what if it's a light fixture or exhaust fan you want to work on? Or that live mystery wire in the hole in the wall above my old bedroom door? (When I asked dad about the wire, he said "I never did figure out where that one went.") I plan to invite a friend over and use the intercom feature on my landline phones… after I replace their batteries so they last longer than 12 minutes, of course.
Yeah I never figured out where that wire went either. You can also chat on your cell phones assuming you're not paying for minutes. If it's a regular fixture you can get one of those horrible light-socket-to-plug adapters.
The bathroom exhaust fan died. So far I've been getting by with leaving the door open and using the HRV. I also need to change the adapters on the hardwired smoke detectors for the new ones I bought. (Which hopefully won't expire before I get around to installing them!)
You shouldn't need the exhaust fan when the HRV is running, it was mostly just left behind to save filling the hole in the ceiling with something else. It was always a noisy, rattly piece of crap too.
The HRV moves enough air on its own? Yeah, it was super noisy… I was planning to get a quiet one. Between removing it (with its heat lamp that I don't use), and the switch for the jets, I can actually go down to a normal switch plate!
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