No shock, it was an enLIGHTening evening!

Tonight I made friends with my house's electrical system. I got to know the fuse box (yep, fuses. It's an old house, remember - no breaker panel here!), then got to work changing out all of the broken, old, or otherwise non-working outlets.













Don't worry, I did my research and followed all the safety rules, but it was still scary - you know, that ever-present fear that if I were to mess up, ZAP!
It had to be done, though, because the house has so few outlets to begin with (generally just one per room!), that having some I couldn't use was way too annoying!

Anyway, I changed out all the outlets, then a whole bunch of light switches as well (those mostly for cosmetic reasons - I like things to match). By the time I was finished, I felt like a pro! (and all those wires weren't so scary anymore!). Would you believe that I removed five different types of outlets, and four different types of switches - previous owners obviously weren't much for consistency!













Aren't they pretty?!? (and yes, you might notice in one of those last pics that bits of plaster went everywhere, and I didn't clean up the mess I made yet. But it's kinda late, and tomorrow is another day!) I did check to make sure that everything is working again (once I put the power back on), so I think the evening was a resounding success!