Close Call

Our house in California was built in 1942 and so we were lucky if there were two outlets per room.  It made plugging shit in a challenge.  In this house, built in 2006, outlets are everywhere.  Sometimes multiple ones to a wall.  In our bedroom there is a place to plug in 12 different things.  Ridiculous.  

Despite the fact that there are electrical outlets in abundance, there is a serious lack of overhead lighting.  My office is problematic because there is no light fixture and lamps can only do so much in a room with high ceilings and lots of square footage.  First world problems, I know.  When you first go up the stairs there is a landing with a few steps that leads up to the play room area.  In that landing there is a giant built in desk with shelving.  I would like to think that someday it will be a perfect place for kids to do homework.  As of right now it is a great place for puzzles.  Not so much for messy art projects (because of the carpet), but lots of coloring does go on.  Anyway, even though there's a desk, there's no overhead light in the area.  Which is so stupid because there's not a good place for a lamp.  

There is, however, an overhead light in the hallway right outside the guest bedroom and bath.  For the past couple of weeks every time that light in the hallway would be flipped on there would be a giant POP and then it would kill the entire circuit, cutting power to the hallway, guest bath and bedroom, and hall light outside Norah's room.  You can kind of see it here.  The open door is the guest bedroom.

It was super annoying because we'd have to reset the circuit in the garage every time someone forgot and turned on that light.  It concerned me because of the POP though and so last week we finally got someone to come out and look at it.

Yeah, some dumbass had put two 75 watt bulbs in the light fixture, even though the fixture CLEARLY said that it had a 40 watt max.  The electrician said that we are incredibly lucky that it didn't start a fire in the insulation that would have likely spread into the attic and then burned down the entire goddamn house.  The wires and insulation in the fixture were completely burned and melted.

My guess is that it probably wasn't the previous homeowner that put those bulbs in, but the idiot realtor who didn't realize the severity of his actions and just wanted to brighten up that dark hallway.  We are spending the weekend checking every.single.bulb in the house and then putting new batteries in all of the smoke detectors.

Then I am going to send a mean email to the realtor.