Wiring a Chandelier for Dummies

What about that red wire, Nichole?

As the Antisocial Network research team combs the internet looking for DotD candidates (and we admit it doesn't take a lot of searching), time and again we find ourselves at good old eHow.com. That's partially because most of the other content farms have died the real death and partially because it's such a target-rich environment. Whatever... One trick the site's less scrupulous contributors liked to pull was to write nearly identical posts on very similar titles, and that's exactly what today's candidate did. She's Nichole Liandi, whom we already caught pretending knowledge in "How to Install a Plug in a Chandelier"; today she returns, doing a similarly stupid job of telling her readers "How to Hard Wire a Chandelier."¹

Liandi liked to impress people with her knowledge of elementary factoids like

"Most chandeliers and ceiling light fixtures are designed to be hard-wired into an existing electrical box in the ceiling. This lets you easily control the light from a convenient wall switch, rather than relying on a pull chain or plugging in the chandelier when you want light. The necessary connections are not hard to make, using some simple tools."

That's pretty much true... it's just that Nichole didn't know how to make those "simple connections"... nor did she know much of anything about electrical work. Take, for instance, this "instruction":

"Loosen the screws on the ceiling's electrical box cover, if so equipped. Take off the cover after removing the screws."

Really? She expected to find a cover on the box? What if there were already a light fixture: what then, dummy? Of course, she'd already said to turn off the breaker, though she didn't say to perform a safety check with a continuity meter or voltmeter before pulling out naked wires and stripping them. So much for safety... And then there were her wiring instructions: "You'll find either two or three wires in the box, depending on the home's wiring. If there's a third wire, it will be bare or colored green as this is the ground wire." Heaven forbid you've encountered a three-way circuit: what do you do with wire number four? Liandi then instructed her reader to strip off half an inch of insulation. Oddly enough, she'd already told them to strip off half an inch in the previous step: so did this mean strip off a full inch in two steps? (bad content editor, bad!)

Liandi then provided elementary instructions for connecting the wires; black to black, white to white, green/bare to green/bare. She said nothing about the support cable commonly found in heavy ceiling fixtures, and also said nothing about some pretty standard installations such as an end-of-run light switch, where the common wire's been recoded black; or about a three-way switch... just black to black, etc.
Nichole also said zip about mounting the light, but we suppose that's because all the OQ wanted was "hard wire" instructions and she'd already handled those. No, if you want instructions for installing a chandelier, whether as a swag lamp or hard-wired, Nichole Liandi simply ain't your resource. If you want a Dumbass of the Day-style take on electrical wiring, though, she's your girl.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was    ehow.com/how_8725318_hard-wire-chandelier.html

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DDIY - WIRING