In Need of Rewiring

A couple of days ago, my husband mentioned that the lamp on his side of the bed wasn’t working.  It has a three-way switch, and the lamp was not working in any of the three settings.  He asked if I had a 3-way bulb to replace the burned out one.  It seemed odd to me that the entire bulb would burn out at the same time.  Usually in a 3-way, one of the elements burns out before the other so the lamp works in at least two of the three “on” positions.  I wondered if it was the lamp that had become defective.  Sure enough, he put in a new bulb, and it immediately blew.  So…it wasn’t the bulb.  It was the lamp itself.

At this point, it dawned on me that years roll by speedily, and the lamp must be at least 40 years old.  The base is still in great shape, but the wiring could certainly have an issue that would cause it to short out after that much time has passed.

So today, I trotted myself out to Home Depot and bought a lamp rewiring kit.  I disassembled the lamp trying to keep track of the positions of all the pieces.  It is a lovely large brass lamp with many pieces!  I laid them out carefully on the table.  I didn’t pay too much attention to the sequence in which I took pieces off…just their relative positions.  That was a mistake!  Since the replacement wire has to go through some pieces with small holes, and once you tie the “underwriter’s knot,” it’s not going through those holes, sequence is important.  Also, the center tube through which the wire goes has to be positioned allowing enough of the threads on the ends to protrude and screw into the pieces at the top and the bottom.  I ran out of hands to hold all of that in place simultaneously.

I finally had it all back together….I thought.  Whoops…there was a piece still laying on the table.  I had forgotten to replace the unit that holds the shade.  That required taking most of it apart again.  So after four rounds of disassembly and assembly, I plugged it in and it worked!

It’s gotten me to thinking though….how long will my personal wiring work before I short out?  I am amazed and grateful that after 73 years, everything still functions pretty well, and in spite of occasionally feeling like my circuits are over-loaded, I haven’t blown any fuses yet!

I guess some acquaintances probably think I’ve blown some fuses, but at least I haven’t had to be rewired.