We’d been pretty unhappy with the electrician, from his constant complaining, scratching up our newly refinished floors, and leaving messes around, he has been one of our least favorite contractors (although I am sure he has not liked this project either as he is deathly allergic to cats, and has been miserable the whole time). But when I mentioned my biggest pet peeve to him, that the two plugs in the bathroom above the sink were not level with one another, I was told that it would be “no problem” to fix it.
So when I came home from work tonight, and went in the bathroom and saw the GIANT hole in the wall indicating he had fixed it, I figured it was no problem, no big deal. I said “so…I guess the electrician was here.” Thor had been home for a couple of hours at the time and replied “yup, he was just finishing up a couple of things.” Thor seemed happy with having our electrical work done. I asked Thor if the electrician was done, and he repplied in the affirmative, everthing looked good. I asked Thor if the two electrical boxes were level now, and he said “huh? The electrical boxes?”
He then went into the bathroom.
“*Fudge! Gosh Darn it! Gosh darn child of an un kind woman! What the fudge! What the fudge was he thinking. That fudging incompetent unmentionable…” and so on. And on.
Meanwhile I am in the kitchen wondering what just happened. I ask him if he’s hurt. Because if this was about the hole in the wall, how had he managed to miss it the previous two hours while he was home. To which Thor replied “*Fracking butt eater. He put a giant hole in the wall. In my newly dry-walled forking wall!”
I guess he hadn’t noticed.
The house was dark when I came in tonight, but that was no surprise since Thor was out working. I turn on the kitchen light, and nothing happens. Maybe I flipped the wrong switch? I’m still not used to even having light switches that turn things on. Nope, the other switch doesn’t work either. Now I start to worry. I walk through the house trying to turn on every thing I can, and each time am met with the same result: nothing. There is no power anywhere to anything, and the house is incredibly cold.
This is more than a blown fuse. Did we even have fuses any more? I call Thor, and he has no idea, but suggests maybe ComEd came and switched our service. I go outside, and sure enough, the meter had been removed and the original power lines that fed into the house had been cut.
We were pretty hesitant to try and turn the new electrical panel on ourselves. We vaguely recalled being warned about messing with “something” that if touched could basically blow the house up. So what followed was a series of phone tag between myself, Thor, Matt, the head electrician, and then the guy who has been working on our house, and a few frantic calls to the power company’s various voice mails. The result was me sitting in the dark and cold in-between running out to the car to keep my phone charged up wondering why in the hell the electric company hadn’t let us know that they were going to switch our power.
The electrician finally showed up (he had been dragged from his sick bed by his boss), it turned out to be a pretty simple matter of first checking to make sure the connection to the old box was off so the house didn’t blow up. Then as he flipped the on switch to the new panel I could hear the furnace rumble to life, and the rest of the house turn itself back on.
