Wiring a Chandelier for the Dummy Electrician

end-of-run switch wiring

As is so often the case, today's DotD nominee stuck her foot in her metaphorical mouth so blatantly that one of our staffers was able to spot evidence of incompetence in her chosen "how-to" task immediately. Given that the article "How to Wire a Chandelier"¹ at HomeSteady.com is 402 words long (it has to be at least 300 to meet Demand Media's minimum word count), the presence of a sentence of amazing stupidity near the very middle shouldn't stand out... but Laura Hageman somehow made sure it did!

What's hilarious to us is that in her introduction, after spending 52 words to explain what chandeliers are, Hageman gravely intoned,

"In order to hang a chandelier, you will need the right equipment and a basic knowledge of wiring."

That's certainly rich, coming as it does from a freelancer who quite clearly has neither that equipment nor that knowledge. That Laura decided that "how to wire" is the same as "how to hang" comes as no surprise. Nevertheless, she did so, admonishing her readers to,

"Connect an electrical box if there is not one attached already. This will be braced in the ceiling where the old fixture was."

If there wasn't one already, there was no "old fixture," Laura! But there's more (there usually is), and it's worse. Check out how Hageman says to "connect an electrical box":

"Fit an expandable bracket into the hole and place it horizontally between two ceiling joists. Turn the bracket and it will expand to fit tightly in the joists."

"Turn the bracket"? is she crazy? Yes, she is: check out her instructions for turning off the power to the circuit:

"[check] the fuse box, which is usually located in the basement. If the place doesn't have a basement, then it may be located in a closet. In the fuse box there are several switches that will go to each room and one overall switch for power. If you are uncertain, then flip all of them off."

A) That's not a fuse box, it's a breaker box; and B) if you don't know how to determine whether a circuit is off (in other words, if you're a freelancer who writes romance novels), you should not be messing with electrical wires!

Hageman's unfamiliarity with the task crops up time and again in such instructions as

"Disconnect the cover to the original light fixture." – Presumably, she means "remove." Step 3: "Connect the white wires from the chandelier to the white wires in the ceiling and do the same with the black wires."  Step 5: "...strip about an inch of insulation off the wires and twist same colored wires together" – Wait, what? She already said to connect the wires; not to mention that there may not be both black and white wires in the ceiling (see image above showing an end-of-run switch controlling a light). Laura simply has no idea what she's talking about, yet blathered about the job anyway. If that's not the chief criterion for choosing a Dumbass of the Day recipient, we don't know what is!

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   homesteady.com/how-4683980-wire-chandelier.html

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DDIY - WIRING