DIY? Not for this Dummy

I am not a handyman -- I don’t even try to fake it anymore. There was a brief time in my life when I actually tried to be a do-it-yourselfer – but it was a short-lived attempt at self-respect before it fizzled out faster than the Seattle Mariners during a playoff race.

My wife, bless her heart, has accepted this as integral to my being and has gone from being mildly annoyed with my inability to fix anything around the house to bald-faced pity for her feckless husband.

Just the other day, after I turned the simple task of replacing a lightbulb in my closet into an exercise in futility, she said to me, “You have really bad luck when it comes to home improvement projects, don’t you?”

It was the kindest thing she could have said to me in that moment – suggesting that my inability to tackle assignments as routine as changing a lightbulb was not my fault, but instead the fault of the stars.

How hard can this be, you ask? For starters, it wasn’t an ordinary lightbulb. It was a long, skinny tube with prongs on both ends that you rotate and clip into place, and it was not just a single bulb but TWO skinny tubes.

And most importantly, it required me to turn off the breaker that feeds electricity to the closet in question. I know this because I consulted several YouTube videos in advance. At this point, I must digress to cover an important point.

Why do electricians feel they need to toy with homeowners by creating a fiendishly confusing set of stickers in the main circuit board that are SUPPOSED to correspond to switches that control electricity to certain parts of the house, but actually never do? The electrician who wired our house -- whom I never personally met and is today probably sipping a pina colada on a beach somewhere -- had a particularly sadistic streak, manifested by a hieroglyphic scrawl on the stickers that would take an NSA code-breaking team or perhaps an ancient Egyptian to crack.

This was my first challenge, which I overcame by flipping the master switch, thus turning off ALL the electricity in the house because I couldn’t decipher which specific switch to flip for my closet light fixture. This, of course, set off a chain reaction involving an entirely new set of problems, including no TV for a while, resetting every clock in the house, and explaining to the alarm company that no, our house was not on fire.

If you are asking yourself whether, at this point, I considered attempting the lightbulb/tube project without shutting off any electricity at all, thus risking death by electrocution, the answer is yes, I did briefly consider that as a more agreeable option than moving forward.

Once I cut off all electricity to the house, I was able to safely remove the tube-bulbs and took both to a Lowe’s Home Improvement store to buy replacements.

This particular Lowe’s is, I’m pretty sure, the largest store of any kind in the Western Hemisphere. The lighting department is in the 206 area code while paints and stains are in the 425 area code. The salespeople have slightly different accents.

I made my way to the lighting department, dropping breadcrumbs along the way in order to find my way out, and introduced myself to a bored-looking guy wearing a red apron named Geoff. I showed him the dead bulbs and asked where I could find replacements.

Geoff was not a real talkative sort. He nodded a couple of times, I think, then directed me to a section with several thousand different kinds of lightbulbs in it. And then…like a puff of smoke in the wind, he just disappeared. I felt like a hitchhiker who had been dropped off in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Thirsty. Looking for a lightbulb. Devoid of hope. Bordering on despair.

It was at that moment I discovered a cottage industry I never knew existed — that of lightbulb development. It turns out I needed a T5, 14w, 1350 Lumens, F4T5 8365, 5/8” x 21.6” bulb. Two of them.

Assuming I would break one bulb at some point later in the day, I of course bought three

I wound my way back through the store, following my breadcrumbs, and drove home emboldened. I went into the Troglodon of stores, had a face-off with Geoff, and came out with three fresh tube-bulbs ready to be installed. I came. I saw. I conquered.

Once home, I grabbed a stepladder, smartly opting for something sturdier than an antique chair, which is my normal go-to elevation device, and snapped in both tube-bulbs. Yes, there was some swearing as the first few attempts proved fruitless, but I ultimately succeeded in getting them properly seated in the housing. I then went downstairs and flipped the master circuit breaker back on, thus resetting about half a dozen clocks in various places throughout the house back to the “red blinking 12:00” position. A project for later that day.

I walked back upstairs for my triumphal moment — that of flipping the light switch on in my closet. I could almost hear the angels bugling above me in the darkened closet. And then…nothing. Not a flicker, not a hint of light. I took the bulbs out and put them back in again. More swearing. And still nothing. Just darkness enveloping me, seeping into my soul.

Did I get the wrong tube-bulbs? Did I incorrectly snap them into position? Did the master circuit blow out the switch in the closet? No, no, and no. Nothing. Kind of like seeing a Seahawks offensive lineman whiff on a block. Nothing but emptiness.

After consulting YouTube again, I diagnosed the problem as something called a faulty light fixture ballast. Several things about this fascinated me. First, that there is such a thing called a light fixture ballast. I stupidly thought ballast was a boat thing. Second, that the guy providing the video tutorial looked like a pirate, right down to the scarf on his head and patch over one eye — and that this was, clearly, his job.

Third, and perhaps most astounding, is that his video titled “How To Replace your Fluorescent Light Ballast EASILY!” had nearly 400,000 views.

I was overjoyed at this statistic. This means that either 400,000 other people had at one time or another needed help installing a ballast, or a smaller number of idiots like myself racked up hundreds of views watching and rewatching the pirate ballast installer do his thing.

I, however, was not one of these people. I watched it once, and not even the entire way through. When he got to the part where you needed to use wire cutters to remove the faulty ballast and install a new one by carefully re-wiring the fixture altogether, I threw in the towel. I’m not sure if it was the idea of going back to TrogloLowe’s, the prospect of meeting up again with Geoff, or quite possibly electrocuting myself – perhaps a combination of all three – but I had met my match. The two skinny bulb-tubes that needed replacing got the better of me.

I now have a free-standing lamp illuminating my closet, with the cord feeding outside of the closet plugged into a hallway outlet. My wife is thrilled by the look.

Anyone know a good, non-sadomasochist electrician still working on his or her first million? Lemme know.