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Cascading Fixer Fail (for those who like watching train wrecks in slow motion)
We'd both been complaining for years that the overhead light cum ceiling fan in the bedroom wasn't bright enough -- to, say, distinguish a black sock from a navy sock. There were LED bulbs in there, but they're several years old and I figured LED bulb technology had probably advanced enough to get something brighter that would still fit in the fixture. So I bought a couple of 100W-replacement LED bulbs, on a whim, the last time we were at Bed Bath & Beyond. Then brought them home and realized the fixture takes candelabra-base bulbs, not standard-base. No problem, I'll find another use for those 100W-replacement bulbs. So I looked at a couple of online vendors and found a candelabra-base LED bulb substantially brighter than our current ones and that I thought would fit (the existing bulbs fit in the glass globe with about 1/2" to spare, so I couldn't get anything more than 1/2" longer). Those arrived today.
I didn't get around to changing them until after dinner, by which time it was dark outside. And of course, as soon as I turned off the overhead light so I can change bulbs, it was dark inside too. (I don't know why it didn't occur to me to grab a standing lamp from another room....) Anyway, I put my phone on "flashlight", changed into a shirt that had a breast pocket, and stuck it in the breast pocket to illuminate whatever I was pointing at. (It sat a little low in the pocket, so I stuffed some toilet paper in the bottom of the pocket to prop it up.)
As previously mentioned, the old (and new) bulbs just barely fit in the globe, and it's really tricky screwing them in while crooking your hands over the edge of the globe and back down to where the sockets are, so I unscrewed the three successive caps that hold the globe on (and put them on the bed; by this time it should have been clear that I needed a receptacle or two for All the Small Parts, but fortunately I didn't lose any of them). The globe very satisfyingly slid a few inches down the pull-chains, just far enough that I could get to the sockets easily. I unscrewed the old bulbs, screwed in the new bulbs, flicked the light switch, and confirmed that they were indeed noticeably brighter than the old ones. Then as I started to put the bulb back in place, both pull-chains came off and fell onto the blanket chest I was standing on.
No, the glass globe didn't break. Neither did the light bulbs. But now I had no way to turn the light or the ceiling fan on or off except the wall switch -- which would be OK, except that in the process of all this, the ceiling fan had somehow gotten turned to "high", and I really didn't want it there forever. One of the pull chains had several inches hanging down, and I figured I could reattach the rest of the chain to that by crimping or, if all else failed, tying a knot in it. But the other one had NO visible chain hanging down from the fixture. I could see exactly the hole it had come from, and nothing was sticking out of that hole. Clearly it had broken inside the hole, which sucks. I would have to open up a bit more of the fixture to find where to reattach it.
After unscrewing four screws, I had the relevant part open, and I could see what was on the inside opposite the hole the pull-chain came through: a two-part plastic cylinder (one face black, the other clear) about 4-5 cm across and 3 cm high with purple, black, brown, and grey wires attached around the equator where clear and black met. Through the clear side, I could see the remaining inch of pull-chain curling around the hub: this was obviously where the chain needed to attach. But how to get in there? The clear side had evidently latched into the black side with toothed prongs that would need to be squeezed to get them out (and were probably not intended to be got out at all). I tried pressing on them with various household implements, and they weren't budging. It occurred to me that the thing had probably been assembled by somebody who had taken a class on how to do it, who was working at a well-lit table rather than just above head-height, illuminated by a breast-pocket phone, and who also had tools custom-made for exactly this purpose. It also occurred to me that maybe the prongs had been latched in and then glued (almost as though they didn't want customers taking the things apart), so I scratched at where I thought there might be glue, then found a small standard screwdriver that I thought would do the job, pressed with it, and voila! one side of the cylinder came open. One of the four wires came out of its socket, so I thought I'd better memorize their positions: counterclockwise from the pull-chain hole, they were purple, black, brown, and grey. Anyway, getting one side open wasn't enough for me to get to the pull-chain, so I scratched and pressed on the other latching prong until it too came open... and something small and metallic went flying through the air before I could catch the rest of the cylinder, from which the remaining three wires had come out too. I got down on hands and knees with the breast-pocket flashlight and found a little Z-shaped copper strip, maybe 1 cm x 0.5 cm in its folded-up Z formation. I didn't know what it was, but at least nothing was lost yet. By this time I had a Container for All the Small Parts, and the Z-shaped copper thing went into it until I could figure out where it belonged.
There was a fortunate side to the wires coming off, since now the cylinder was no longer attached to the fixture, and I could take it into another room where there was a well-lit countertop to work on it. The black half of the cylinder was a single piece, fortunately. Also fortunately, there were three other Z-shaped copper things that hadn't fallen out, so I could see where the one that had should go. Still fortunately, nothing had fallen out from in between because there was a flat black plastic piece holding the small parts into the clear half. This wasn't attached nearly so firmly, and I was able to get it off with the small standard screwdriver. And naturally all the small parts inside went flying: a spring, a small sheet-metal thing with a hook holding the end of the pull-chain, and a white plastic disk with teeth on the surface and short plastic axles sticking out of the middles of both sides. But I found them all, and I remembered that I had seen the square plastic axle before this latest step of disassembly, so it must be the one that poked through the flat black plastic piece. And the only thing it could possibly attach to was the sheet-metal thingie, which had been on top of the spring. I replaced the inch-long bit of pull-cord with the foot-long part that had fallen out on the blanket chest, and started trying to put things back together. (This was the half-way mark, theoretically... but unlike in the Hero Quest pattern, the way home is often longer than the way out.)
I assembled all this and put the flat black plastic cover back on (it snapped into place satisfyingly), pulled the chain... and it didn't move, nor spring back. I'd obviously skipped third base or something. So I pried it open again. The spring obviously served to provide resistance to the pull-chain, so when you pulled and released it it would go back to its erstwhile position (after flipping a switch). So the straight end at the bottom of the spring had to be on this side of that little plastic tooth, while the straight end at the top had to be on that side of the sheet-metal thingie, caught by the same hook that held the pull-chain. And now the chain moved and pulled on the spring so the spring could pull it back. Put the flat black plastic thing back on... and it wouldn't close. Turns out that all this only fits together when the spring is compressed, and part of the chain had gone through the side of the chain so it couldn't compress properly. Tried again with the chain properly looped around the spring and not interfering with it. After several tries I got the flat black plastic cover to close, but it no longer snapped satisfyingly into place, as though a necessary prong had broken off (although I didn't see anything that looked broken). And I figured as long as I put the black half of the cylinder back onto its prongs, it would hold everything in place anyway.
Of course, the black half of the cylinder had been holding four wires in place, so I had to get all four of them back in place before snapping it on. Above head-height, in mid-air, by the light of a breast-pocket cell phone. This obviously requires about five hands, ideally all very small and nimble, and I had only two, not so small and nimble... but I got the wires more or less in place, and the black plastic half wouldn't snap on and wouldn't snap on, and I concluded that the parts of it that the clear prongs had gone through had broken off and gone flying at some point in the process. And all four wires had to be connected through that cylinder: without them, neither the light nor the fan worked.
At which point I finally accepted reality: this was not going to be fixed. What should have been a straightforward light-bulb change had taken two hours and left us down one ceiling-fan-and-light fixture.
I didn't get around to changing them until after dinner, by which time it was dark outside. And of course, as soon as I turned off the overhead light so I can change bulbs, it was dark inside too. (I don't know why it didn't occur to me to grab a standing lamp from another room....) Anyway, I put my phone on "flashlight", changed into a shirt that had a breast pocket, and stuck it in the breast pocket to illuminate whatever I was pointing at. (It sat a little low in the pocket, so I stuffed some toilet paper in the bottom of the pocket to prop it up.)
As previously mentioned, the old (and new) bulbs just barely fit in the globe, and it's really tricky screwing them in while crooking your hands over the edge of the globe and back down to where the sockets are, so I unscrewed the three successive caps that hold the globe on (and put them on the bed; by this time it should have been clear that I needed a receptacle or two for All the Small Parts, but fortunately I didn't lose any of them). The globe very satisfyingly slid a few inches down the pull-chains, just far enough that I could get to the sockets easily. I unscrewed the old bulbs, screwed in the new bulbs, flicked the light switch, and confirmed that they were indeed noticeably brighter than the old ones. Then as I started to put the bulb back in place, both pull-chains came off and fell onto the blanket chest I was standing on.
No, the glass globe didn't break. Neither did the light bulbs. But now I had no way to turn the light or the ceiling fan on or off except the wall switch -- which would be OK, except that in the process of all this, the ceiling fan had somehow gotten turned to "high", and I really didn't want it there forever. One of the pull chains had several inches hanging down, and I figured I could reattach the rest of the chain to that by crimping or, if all else failed, tying a knot in it. But the other one had NO visible chain hanging down from the fixture. I could see exactly the hole it had come from, and nothing was sticking out of that hole. Clearly it had broken inside the hole, which sucks. I would have to open up a bit more of the fixture to find where to reattach it.
After unscrewing four screws, I had the relevant part open, and I could see what was on the inside opposite the hole the pull-chain came through: a two-part plastic cylinder (one face black, the other clear) about 4-5 cm across and 3 cm high with purple, black, brown, and grey wires attached around the equator where clear and black met. Through the clear side, I could see the remaining inch of pull-chain curling around the hub: this was obviously where the chain needed to attach. But how to get in there? The clear side had evidently latched into the black side with toothed prongs that would need to be squeezed to get them out (and were probably not intended to be got out at all). I tried pressing on them with various household implements, and they weren't budging. It occurred to me that the thing had probably been assembled by somebody who had taken a class on how to do it, who was working at a well-lit table rather than just above head-height, illuminated by a breast-pocket phone, and who also had tools custom-made for exactly this purpose. It also occurred to me that maybe the prongs had been latched in and then glued (almost as though they didn't want customers taking the things apart), so I scratched at where I thought there might be glue, then found a small standard screwdriver that I thought would do the job, pressed with it, and voila! one side of the cylinder came open. One of the four wires came out of its socket, so I thought I'd better memorize their positions: counterclockwise from the pull-chain hole, they were purple, black, brown, and grey. Anyway, getting one side open wasn't enough for me to get to the pull-chain, so I scratched and pressed on the other latching prong until it too came open... and something small and metallic went flying through the air before I could catch the rest of the cylinder, from which the remaining three wires had come out too. I got down on hands and knees with the breast-pocket flashlight and found a little Z-shaped copper strip, maybe 1 cm x 0.5 cm in its folded-up Z formation. I didn't know what it was, but at least nothing was lost yet. By this time I had a Container for All the Small Parts, and the Z-shaped copper thing went into it until I could figure out where it belonged.
There was a fortunate side to the wires coming off, since now the cylinder was no longer attached to the fixture, and I could take it into another room where there was a well-lit countertop to work on it. The black half of the cylinder was a single piece, fortunately. Also fortunately, there were three other Z-shaped copper things that hadn't fallen out, so I could see where the one that had should go. Still fortunately, nothing had fallen out from in between because there was a flat black plastic piece holding the small parts into the clear half. This wasn't attached nearly so firmly, and I was able to get it off with the small standard screwdriver. And naturally all the small parts inside went flying: a spring, a small sheet-metal thing with a hook holding the end of the pull-chain, and a white plastic disk with teeth on the surface and short plastic axles sticking out of the middles of both sides. But I found them all, and I remembered that I had seen the square plastic axle before this latest step of disassembly, so it must be the one that poked through the flat black plastic piece. And the only thing it could possibly attach to was the sheet-metal thingie, which had been on top of the spring. I replaced the inch-long bit of pull-cord with the foot-long part that had fallen out on the blanket chest, and started trying to put things back together. (This was the half-way mark, theoretically... but unlike in the Hero Quest pattern, the way home is often longer than the way out.)
I assembled all this and put the flat black plastic cover back on (it snapped into place satisfyingly), pulled the chain... and it didn't move, nor spring back. I'd obviously skipped third base or something. So I pried it open again. The spring obviously served to provide resistance to the pull-chain, so when you pulled and released it it would go back to its erstwhile position (after flipping a switch). So the straight end at the bottom of the spring had to be on this side of that little plastic tooth, while the straight end at the top had to be on that side of the sheet-metal thingie, caught by the same hook that held the pull-chain. And now the chain moved and pulled on the spring so the spring could pull it back. Put the flat black plastic thing back on... and it wouldn't close. Turns out that all this only fits together when the spring is compressed, and part of the chain had gone through the side of the chain so it couldn't compress properly. Tried again with the chain properly looped around the spring and not interfering with it. After several tries I got the flat black plastic cover to close, but it no longer snapped satisfyingly into place, as though a necessary prong had broken off (although I didn't see anything that looked broken). And I figured as long as I put the black half of the cylinder back onto its prongs, it would hold everything in place anyway.
Of course, the black half of the cylinder had been holding four wires in place, so I had to get all four of them back in place before snapping it on. Above head-height, in mid-air, by the light of a breast-pocket cell phone. This obviously requires about five hands, ideally all very small and nimble, and I had only two, not so small and nimble... but I got the wires more or less in place, and the black plastic half wouldn't snap on and wouldn't snap on, and I concluded that the parts of it that the clear prongs had gone through had broken off and gone flying at some point in the process. And all four wires had to be connected through that cylinder: without them, neither the light nor the fan worked.
At which point I finally accepted reality: this was not going to be fixed. What should have been a straightforward light-bulb change had taken two hours and left us down one ceiling-fan-and-light fixture.