Let there be Light

Our kitchen has about a dozen recessed lights, and for several months now, about half of them haven't been working. This half happens to be over the table where we work. There was some kind of problem with the switch that controlled them, and Mike didn't want to tackle fixing it because (although he's quite handy around the house) he didn't feel that confident about messing with electricity. (And let me just say that I fully support the avoidance of electrocution.) BUT, because he felt a bit guilty about not doing it himself, he also didn't want to call the electrician. We've been making do with a halogen lamp, but it was far from an ideal solution.

So, finally, my nagging and complaining and giving him the phone number worked. (Why didn't I just call the electrician myself, you ask? There's no good answer for that. My excuse is that Mike is the one that's home and would be dealing with the person, but in reality, it's something along the lines of home repairs being Mike's department.)

We've had terrible luck with electricians so far in North Carolina. In Philly, we had two or three main electricians in the area, and they were pricy, but least you had some confidence that they would show up and were reasonably competent. The first electrician we had down here didn't know what he was doing (and frankly, boggled our minds by talking about how he wasn't used to working on "old" houses -- our 1960's house is downright modern compared to our Philly 'hood), and the second one seemed to know what he was doing but then screwed things up (outlets that had previously been working stopped working after he was here, and despite repeated phone calls, he never returned to fix it).

This time, we used the electrician provided by our home warranty service. (You pay a yearly fee, and then if something goes wrong with one of the main systems in your house, you only pay a basic service fee to get it fixed -- this really saved our bacon with some plumbing problems a couple years ago and the A/C last year.) This person claimed he was going to be here between 1 and 4 PM last Thursday, never showed, promised to be here on Friday, claimed a couple times that he was "on his way", never showed, rescheduled for today "first thing in the morning", and finally showed up around 3 PM. And lucky for him (and us), he got the job done in a reasonable fashion. We had already called the home warranty service to complain, and we had a detailed complaint letter all ready to go (bitching, now that's my department). We're not sure if we're going to send it now, but Mike did tell the guy that he had to get better at estimating his time. It was a minor annoyance for us, since Mike works from home anyhow, but if we were normal people who'd had to take three days off from work waiting around for this bozo, we'd be furious.

In any case, we now have a fully-lit kitchen, and I'm delighted! (It's the little things...)