Ceiling Light Installation for Dummies

Chandelier

No matter what task we're tackling for the first time, we can find detailed instructions on how to carry it out by searching the internet. The problem, too often, is that we sometimes find instructions written by someone who's done the job exactly the same number of times as we have: none. Here's a classic example of detailed instructions written by someone who simply "researched" the question online and then got paid twenty-five bucks for her trouble: Demand Media's Amy Kingston tells us "How to Hang a Rod Chandelier Pendant on a Vaulted Ceiling" for SFGate.com.

The first giveaway is that Amy draws heavily on a blog about putting in a heavy chandelier, so she goes into great detail about how we have to swap out electrical boxes, including telling us to

"Place the end of a pry bar under the electrical box, and pry it off the ceiling joist."

Really? In a vaulted ceiling? How we gonna do that, you dumbass - cut a hole in the roof? In reality, Amy appears to have been confused by the instructions in her references, so she didn't know why we might have to replace the box, much less how to recognize a box that won't support 150 pounds of frou-frou crystal. Reading on, we also liked Amy's instructions for connecting wires: "Twist the ends of the connected wires, and cover the connections with wire nuts." Clearly she's someone who doesn't know how to use a wire nut (she probably learned from some of the other topnotch freelance journalists at eHow). We also like it that Amy tells us to

"Assemble the chandelier on the floor. Push the rod over the chandelier wire, and screw it onto the threaded connector on the bottom of the chandelier’s canopy. The wire should protrude from the hole in the top of the canopy." 

Huh? Does that make any sense to you? And her next step is to wire the connections. We wonder how she intends to get the chandelier up in the air...


Nope, it's a typical dumbass set of instructions from a typical dumbass Demand Media freelancer; and this was posted after Demand Media supposedly weeded out their deadwood. We guess not... hence the Dumbass of the Day award.

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DDIY - ELECTRICAL