Electrical adventures

Here in Switzerland, when you rent an apartment, standard practice is that they come with no light fixtures. So, you have to buy them and install them yourself, if you're feeling up to it, or call in an electrician. We have four of these lovely holes with wires sticking out of them to attach our new light fixtures to.

I tackled this task today, as I wanted more light in the kitchen to make it easier to cook at night. I had found some screws and plastic drywall anchors at Ikea in their lighting department, and hoped that they would work. Never having done this before I wasn't sure. First, I turned off the breaker for the kitchen/hall/front room. Only it was marked küche/gang/vorne zimmer...not too hard to figure out, luckily! Then, I marked where the screws needed to go - holding the light fixture in place, drilled holes for the drywall anchors, tapped them in, and fastened the fixture in place with the wires hanging through. Now the tricky part - figuring out which was the live wire. Really, there was nothing tricky about it...I just hooked up the wires, screwed in a lightbulb, and turned on the breaker and light switch. The light didn't work, so I tried the wires in another combination, and voila! There was light! Since I was on a roll, I put the one up in the hallway as well.

When night came, it became apparent that the light in the kitchen is too small and dim, with just one bulb, to light the kitchen sufficiently, so I will probably end up switching it out for one of the bigger light fixtures that we got. Unfortunately, I need to get hooks for it, so will have to make another trip out to Ikea first.