I am still terrible at electrical work. All I’ve really done is change light fixtures, but working on things attached to the ceiling is not any kind of fun. As a result, I’ve had trouble getting motivated to finish a couple really minor projects. They weren’t even ceiling-related, but I associate wiring with getting dust and fiberglass in my eyeballs – which makes me a little hesitant to wire things! Yesterday I replaced the rusty old polished brass number at the back door with something that matches the new door hardware:

Sweet hand-me-down lighting. Thanks, Amy & Alex!

A running joke at home is that mom always wants before and after pictures when dad works on a project, but we never remember the “before” ones. Dad will be replacing shingles or siding, building a barn, pulling out old shrubs, etc… and halfway through the job someone will say “this is going to look so much better – we should take before and after pictures!” True to form, I forgot to take a picture of the old porch-light.

Though vertically-mounted lighting is much, much easier than mounting friggin’ ceiling fixtures, I still bungled around twisting wires together and getting them to fit nicely into the wall. So, I was glad when I pulled out the old doorbell and remembered that low voltage stuff is a cakewalk.

Why put in a brushed nickel doorbell when the front door is bedecked with polished brass? Well, I hate polished brass, and the old doorbell was good and broken.

The plastic disappeared from the button a few months ago. I don’t know if it fell off, or what, but it’s gone. I was not crazy about the button at the front door looking like some tiny cyclops robot from an 80s movie, but I put off changing for fear that whatever I bought wouldn’t fit right. The new mount was a bit short; thankfully its self-driving screws were nice and sharp. I don’t think the drill driver would have worked so well with the bricks sticking out right in the way.

Oh yeah – I forgot to take a picture of the old unit until after I was finished putting in the new one. Fail.