Bathroom Lighting for the Dummy DIY Electrician

Fishing tape

When it comes to performing household maintenance and simple DIY work around the house, we've noticed that many people are more comfortable hiring an electrician than doing the work themselves. We understand: electricity is scary! On the other hand, most simple wiring projects aren't that complicated, so a careful and smart DIYer should be able to handle them... but not if he or she is getting the kind of online help supplied by eHowian Carson Barrett in "How to Replace Bathroom Vanity Lights Going From One Light to Two Lights."

In reality Barrett's instructions, if you can call them that; are, in some places, downright stupid. About the only thing the dude gets completely right is his first two steps, which boil down to

"Turn off power to the light at your home's main electrical panel. Test the light by turning the switch on and off. Remove the light bulb and test the circuit again with a voltage tester. If you get a reading, go back to the electrical panel and turn off the correct circuit..."

...which would work, though we'd be inclined to test the wiring, not the socket. Be that as it may, Carson's rambling instructions – reworded from articles for wiring a 2-way switch and hanging a ceiling fixture – are a mishmash of half-truths, misconceptions, and outright stupidity. Take, for instance his step for installing a new electrical box:

"Slide the electrical cables through one of the electrical boxes, and screw the box to the stud in the first hole." Well, Carson, if you're gonna have them do that, you need to make certain you tell your readers to buy old work electrical boxes (which you didn't); otherwise they're gonna have a major problem. And then there's this cogent instruction: "Reach inside the hole you cut in the drywall in the wall between the light switch and the hole for the original light fixture and grab the electrical cable for the light fixture. Remove the tape holding the end of the cable to the wall, and pull it through the hole for the new fixture."

That presupposes that the new fixture is in the run between the old fixture and the new one, which is not necessarily true. It also presupposes that the supply wire runs through the wall -- what if it runs through the ceiling? – and that the supply wires aren't stapled to the studs (which they may need to be to meet code). And finally, there's

"Place [a] second cable through the wall so the ends are sticking out of the holes for the new fixtures."

Uh, gee, Carson – what if there's a stud in there somewhere?

It's pretty clear Barrett had no idea what he was writing about and just reworded some (fairly good) instructions for a different DIY electrical job. Apparently the only fishing he knows anything about is bass fishing... and that's all we needed to know to give Carson Dumbass of the Day award number three.

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