Adventures in Home Rentership
We’ve been having what turned out to be the dumbest adventure here in the Scavo house. We knew when we moved in that our house was special. We’d never lived in our own house before, so it was going to be inherently different from renting an apartment. We were prepared for that. We just weren’t really expecting to find a house that was built by a madman. Or rather, a homeowner who did all his own work. So we move in and every room is on a different level, but only slightly. There’s a slight raise under the carpet between the living room and dining room, a step up into the office, down into the side door hall, up into the kitchen, and down into the bathroom. We also have light switches that flip the wrong way and light switches that don’t do anything at all.
But we’re super pumped to be in a house of our own and we work on unpacking and setting everything up and it’s all going well, until one day the dining room light doesn’t turn on. That’s weird, sure, but probably just a burned out bulb, right? It takes us a while because it’s a pain to take the cover off and replace the light, but we do it, eventually and try the light again… still nothing. So we resolve to call our landlady… eventually. We’re really bad at calling people. It’s super scary. So we wait and wait and eventually get up the courage to call and ask about that and mention the branch that my dad has been telling us to call about since we moved in.
So the first guy comes while we’re not home and comes in and does his thing, checking the wiring, because in the intervening time I’ve discovered that it’s not just the light switch, but the outlet too, that’s not working. He takes a look at the outlet wires and the light wires and can’t find anything wrong so he goes down to look at the breaker box, which is fine, but he turns everything off and on again, just to see what happens. He claims it worked, but when we got home, the light still wasn’t working.
Now we need a different guy to come in and figure out what’s wrong. He was scheduled to come last Tuesday, but I went swimming last Tuesday and didn’t make it home in time to let him in. So Thursday he was supposed to come back but we had a concert and were super concerned that he wouldn’t be done in time for us to leave. Well he didn’t show up at all, so there was no worries there. I’m not sure if the guy who finally showed up yesterday was the same guy who a different one, but I suspect he was the guy who worked with our landlady before because he was very familiar with the house.
It was an older guy and a woman who came to my door yesterday. They was very nice, and quite determined to figure out what was going on. The guy checked all the things, got up in the drop ceiling and traced the wiring all around the ceiling to try and see if there was an issue anywhere along the line. What he found while doing that was super dumb. He found the problem and fixed it and I, from my chair, am super excited that he got it working again. He, from the hall calls “You are not going to believe how dumb this is. Wait until you see.” I go around once they’ve moved the ladder out of the way and I can get through the hall. He takes me back to the kitchen were that light switch that didn’t do anything sits above my stove. He flips it. The light in the dining room goes off. The light switch in the kitchen controls the light switch in the hall, that controls the light in the dining room. This is how our house works.
So now, of course, I feel super dumb for not thinking of it before. Then again, neither did the first guy, apparently, or my landlady, and it took the last guy half an hour of trying things and chasing wires before he figured it out, so I don’t feel quite as bad as I could, I guess. Because, really, who would have guessed that the light switch controlled another light switch? That’s just nonsense! But it’s all sorted out now. I know not to turn off the mysterious switch of mystery anymore because apparently it shuts down part of the house. And that was our grand adventure in lighting issues and house rentership. I hope you all have a lovely day my friends.
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