One Thing

Recently I was on the phone with my dad and I was telling him about how I wasn't making headway on some projects because the mixture of my perfectionist and procrastinist personality was keeping me from starting anything that I couldn't complete in one attempt.

He said, "you need to just do one thing a day"...if you get more done, great but as long as you do one thing, you are doing okay. So today, I really wanted to settle in for a couple of movies but I told myself that I couldn't until I did my one thing.

My one thing today was to replace this outlet with a GFCI outlet since it is located right next to the sink in the masterbath. The key was that it has to be done during the day since I figured that turning off the circuit breaker for the bathroom would take out the lights.

One thing I have found in the process of projects at the Bamboo Lagoon, is that nothing is easy. And as simple as this seemed, it wasn't as easy as it looked.

1. Found all tools needed including headlamp.
2. Flipped breaker marked Masterbedroom and bath.
3. Checked lights, all were out, but thankfully, I also tested the outlet just to be safe and I found that it was still hot.
4. Spent twenty minutes flipping other breakers and testing outlet trying to figure out which circuit it was on without having to flip a main.
5. Found it was the circuit marked Bath and Garage, and when I hit it, it killed the power in the upstairs office (which used to be a 1/2 guest bath) which meant no Internet.
6. Removed the screws to pull the socket out of the wall. It was an older socket so removing the wires was different than what I was used to.
7. Turned on circuit breaker so Internet would come back up.
8. Watched tutorial and figured it out.
9. Flipped circuit breaker again. Removed wires from back.
10. Connected GFCI outlet. Pushed outlet back into electrical box, and attached with the two screws.
11. Turned on the breaker and tested the outlet, tester said it was set up right.
12. Screwed on new faceplate, noticed that outlet was crooked.
13. Removed the faceplate and unscrewed the outlet to see if something was blocking it in the back.
14. Cleaned up back of electrical box.
15. Rescrewed in the outlet and put faceplate back on.

Looks a lot better don't you think? This room is going to get patched and repainted as soon as some other little projects get done so the wall will eventually look better.