gothic — Blog — MAYBE-CK

After installing the lights, I wasn't getting them to turn on. First thing to check with my beeper (electricity detector) was power to the switch box. I wasn't getting anything from the switch boxes so I checked the fuses to see if there are any burnt ones. So I decided I should tie into the power going to the other switches by the front door. I used a piece of spare wire, held by my wire strippers (with insulated handles) to jump power from the hot light switch to the living room 3 way. I touched it to one pole on the 3 way and the light lit up! Nice! Then I connected it to the other pole and POP! Blew a fuse. The reason for this is there actually was power to the box but I just have a crappy beeper. Connecting a 110v hot to another 110v hot makes 220v.

Even for people like me who are pretty good with 3 ways, it helps to make notes. The old knob and two wires were not labeled so I had to figure out which was which.

Now I know that B wire is hot in (supposed to be black), C goes to the light somehow and when B is switched to A (common), it goes to the other switch (beeped for hot over there). Since there are only three wires, I know that if the hot comes in her… — Now I know that B wire is hot in (supposed to be black), C goes to the light somehow and when B is switched to A (common), it goes to the other switch (beeped for hot over there). Since there are only three wires, I know that if the hot comes in here, the other switch box must be connected to the lights

I started labeling the wires with tape. A legit electrician would use different colored electrical tape to mark them. I started sketching it out:

The tall ceilings in the living room are missing a matching pair of light fixtures, likely made by "Otar - The Lamp Maker, Santa Cruz, CA" (from the historical documents).

I talked to the man who grew up there whose parents bought the house in 1960 about the lights in the living room. He said they were brass carriage lanterns but were stolen when the house was unoccupied.

He said this is the closest picture he could find of what they looked like

He also said that there used to be one next to the front steps.

I wasn't sure whether these were original since I haven't seen brass fixtures in any Maybeck houses. I got the idea to use some wrought iron lanterns from this picture of the Geisler House (1924), which could be what the originals in this house looked like.

So I started looking for a pair of light fixtures of this type. I found a similar kind I really liked that was made around the '50s-'70s. Made in Mexico from wrought iron, with textured glass (a tipoff that it's mid-century), also in amber. It wasn't too hard to find one at a time, but they were usually around $100 for one. However, I couldn't just buy two separately since there was a lot of variation in the finer details of the design and glass color and texture. I lucked out and found a pair for $50! They were rusty because they had been outside but that wasn't a problem for me. I drove down to San Jose to pick them up.