Baron Of Whitfield’s DIY Story

By Brian Schnee | October 25, 2022

“Greetings Brian,

I need your advice on how do I determine if the switch is faulty? I get a short in power when I turn on the switch the light flickers and turns off.

Let there be light!
I had this light switch in my hallway that after I turned it on, it flickered and went out. It wasn’t every time, so I wasn’t too alarmed. In fact, being a creature of habit, I learned to deal with it. I did use my senses to see if the switch was hot or smelled of any kind of burning. I just went with the flow saying to myself, “oh one day I’ll have to call an electrician”. That one day turned into months maybe even close to a year.

Then one day I was bold enough to enroll in a home improvement course at Baldwin Library where I met Brian Schnee. I was leery that I would be able to grasp the foreign concepts as I have never prided myself in being a handyman. Off the bat Brian is a good teacher and he kept everything simple for me to understand the process of how to feel confident in changing out a light switch. I was even apart of the infamous group whose light switch failed to turn on providing a classic example of how to troubleshoot when things don’t work out.

Back to the switch in my hallway. Though I took the class with Brian it was almost seven months later that I wasn’t confident to put the skills I learned into practice. I gathered my tools, took off the plate, snapped a photo and sent it over to Brian by email. The whole time I thought to myself, “I don’t want to electrocute myself, maybe I should leave this to the pros?” Brian set a day and time to call me and he was helpful to give me a few pointers and walk me through a plan of action. Always with the heart of teacher Brian said, “let’s talk this through, what happens when the switch is turned on?” I replied, “I get power, but the bulb doesn’t stay on”. “So, what does this mean? I replied, “that the problem seems to be the switch”. Brian agreed and said, “give it a try if you run into any problems give me a call and we will work it out”. I followed all the steps that I learned during the class and wah-lah “Let there be light!” I fixed it, my confidence went from a 1 to 100. I documented my work and was ecstatic to share with Brian. I was energized (pun intended), and grateful to be empowered to step up my DIY skills.”