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I did a little electrical work on my house on Saturday. To do this one thing, I needed to open an old junction box in the basement and was horrified to find the condition of the wiring in there. I knew the old wire in this circuit was ungrounded. What I didn't know was that there was about two inches of uninsulated hot wire jammed into a corner of the junction box, just looking for something to short out against. I also didn't know that somebody had "grounded" the box by screwing a neutral wire (which carries current sometimes!) to the side of the box.
If someone had touched the side of this box while supporting themselves by holding onto the nearby radiator pipe, they would have received a nasty shock whenever the dining room light was on.
So I fixed it all, converted an ungrounded outlet into a grounded outlet, and even got some basement lights that were set up with individual pull chain switches to be controlled by the switch at the top of the stairs.
I was really pleased with myself, because I didn't need to make any additional trips to the hardware store to get additional materials. I seem to be getting better at this stuff.
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