My so-called 15 minute light switch fix took me 3 hours

I went to swap out a dimmer switch in my living room last Saturday. Simple job right? Turn off the breaker, pull the old one, wire the new one. Took me 15 minutes max I thought. Well I took the old switch out and saw there were four wires crammed in there instead of the usual three. Turns out the previous owner had wired a three-way setup wrong and just left an extra traveler wire floating around. I spent the next two hours watching YouTube videos and trying to figure out which wire was which. Finally I just capped the extra wire and put the new dimmer in with just the hot, neutral, and ground. Worked perfect. Has anyone else run into a simple home project that turned into a whole afternoon ordeal?

2 comments

2 Comments

anderson.jason10d ago

My buddy Mike tried hanging a ceiling fan and ended up rewiring his whole attic for six hours.

the_ben10d ago

Tried hanging a picture frame last week and somehow broke two drill bits...