Little projects…. they don’t take that long but life always seems to get in the way so those 20 min projects start to add up. My list has seemed to have grown way too long to the point that it’s getting a little intimidating so tonight I finally decided to knock a few things off it. We replaced the kitchen countertops and re-faced the cabinets last year and the only thing left in the kitchen is to replace all the light fixtures and outlets. I figured this should be easy enough to do so I went out to the fuse box to flip off the power to the kitchen. Now this should have been easy but when your house is built back in the 80′s you begin to find all the problems as you start to update things. The wiring leaves a little to be desired and I couldn’t find the right fuse for some of the outlets. Getting very frustrated I started turning off everything and even tried the garage fuse. Nope that didn’t work either. So about to give up I decided to switch gears so I could actually get something accomplished. (I’ll have to leave the light fixtures for another project night) Since I had the power off to the garage I was able to fix a few things out there. The pull cord to the ceiling fan had broken awhile ago so we couldn’t turn the fan off. This was a simple fix but again just had to take the little bit of time to fix it. I found a new switch at Home Depot and it had detailed directions on the back to swap out. All I had to do was open up the bottom of the fan, unhook a few wires and connect them to the new unit…. and it’s as good as new! (and finally cleaner too)

The next project was again a small one but just need the short time to get it done. The old unit to open the garage door had gone on the fritz….randomly we would walk into the garage and mysteriously it would be open and it seemed that the unit had a short circuit. No problems here thanks to a friends great idea… a doorbell!! What a simple but genius idea! He said to buy a simple doorbell button and you could easily connect the garage door opener wires to the back of the button and voila! It worked!

I will need to drill a new hole for the second screw but I’m not able to find the drill at the moment so that will have to wait. At least it works and finally 2 small projects I can cross off my list! Now it’s time to relax since tomorrow morning is going to be a long 20 mile training run =)

Enjoy your weekend!

** photo overlay from Pugly Pixel **