It's Electric

I pay close attention to the details on some things. One project that I wanted to do in my place for a long time was to change all of the outlets from the original 2 prong, ungrounded receptacles to the 3 prong grounded outlets. Also, some were painted shut, non-functional, dirty, dingy, a thousand shades other than white. I wanted all white to go with the extra-large smooth plates I bought years ago (I changed all of the lightswitches a couple of years ago, oh why don't I have any pictures of that). Pictures. They are worth a thousand words, right?

EXAMPLE OUTLET BEFORE:


EXAMPLE OUTLET AFTER:


The reason I waited so long to change outlets - the apartment next door to me (owned by my best friend's mom) is inextricably/inexplicably wired to mine. So my outlet is powered by her breaker box and vice versa. Kinda crazy. Also, with the cloth wiring and the fact that you have to be 100% SURE that there is no current running through the wire before you even think about touching it (uh, yes, I do know this from personal experience. In this case, since my breaker box does not control this one outlet, I got semi-electrocuted. Duh. I am okay though. We worked it out and she turned off her power so I could change it. Took me 10 minutes.) With outlets you can't be 100% absolutely sure unless you have an electrical current tester/sensor.

With light switches you can be pretty sure that if the light's off when you flip the breaker switch, that there is no power running through the wires at the light source.... Does that make sense?

Oh goodie, here is a picture that includes the new white lightswitch/cover in the bedroom:

Unfortunately, you can also see that pile o' stuff I tried to shove out of every other picture I took on the day I decided to "stage" the apartment to showcase how much room/light there is for when I sell it. Well, it also happened to be the day before I officially moved out and stuff was everywhere.

You can kinda blurrily see the living room lightswitch here:


I've always loved how the living room and bedroom colors complement each other from the doorways on either end. See:



Before I changed them all, there were some black light switches, some almond, some painted all nasty.... Just a hot mess. Take this one outlet cover as an example of how gross it is when it's been painted over and over again:

Like, a thousand coats of paint and just plain crusty!

Stepping it up a notch, I wanted the bathroom outlet to be up to code before I sell it. Since it is in a wet area it needs a GFCI outlet (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter). You know, for when you are blowdrying your hair and you accidentally drop the blowdryer in the toilet? This outlet will save your life and your circuitry by stopping the current of electricity in its tracks. Don't worry, you can safely turn it back on again once you've fished your blowdryer out of the toilet, unplugged it and made sure to cut back on the caffeine and crack.

This is what I was working with in the bathroom BEFORE:



Yes, that's right! The second outlet was painted completely shut! I can't even begin to tell you in how many ways this outlet was wrong.... I was a little bit scared to tackle this project. But I took several deep breaths, tested the sh#t out of the old outlet and went forth and replaced it:


GFCI, baby!