So... I'm NOT an Electrician...

You may be able to tell from the name of this post that I am not a professional electrician nor do I have any real training. Just throwing that disclaimer out there.  That said, one of the reasons I blog is so that others may learn from my successes and failures/mistakes. Well, I have to tell you all that I made an error, one that scared me quite a bit...

Let's go back to this post where I showed you how to install outlets. Well, I made an error. I was misinformed and I thought it didn't matter which side of the outlet had the white wires and which side had the black... WRONG. It does matter. Black wires go on brass screws and white wires go on silver screws. Here's what all of my Den outlets looked like...

See my error? So, why didn't I discover this earlier? Because the outlets still worked. Apparently installing them as I did still allows the current to run through it, it just runs backwards. Most modern appliance plugs will work no matter which direction the current is flowing, but it's still wrong. So, if the outlets still work, how did I know they were backwards? See this little guy? He's very useful:

You plug this into an outlet and the bottom three lights will either light up red, yellow, or white. Using the key on top, you can see if your outlet is correct. So, this past weekend I had to spend 30 minutes flipping all my Den outlets around. So fun to re-do a job you thought finished! 

But wait, there's more!

Not only did I install the Den outlets wrong, I also gave myself a heart attack this past weekend. See, I'm working on the nursery and I want the outlets and switch replaced with white version. Well, confident in my previous Den outlets success (I hadn't discovered the backward outlets yet) I flipped the switch in the breaker box to off and went into the room and changed out four plugs and the light switch. I then went to flip the switch to on and discovered a problem. When I tried to flip the switch to the on position, it would switch to on, buzz for a bout a second and then spark and flip to off. Um... when your breaker box starts to spark it tends to induce concern (to put it lightly). I was really worried that I'd somehow broken our house. Well, at least caused an electrical problem that would be expensive and timely to fix. I had visions of electricians having to tear into our walls to get to stuff (I don't even know if they do that... I just worried about it). And to make matters worse, apparently our bathroom is on the same circuit as the nursery. This meant I had to use an lamp in the bathroom to see in the shower (extension cord running down the hall to a bedroom that had power). Not the best way to bath. Well, my father in law came over Monday while I as at work (after two mornings of bathing by lamp light) and discovered the problem. If you read my post about installing outlets you'll remember that I mentioned the tabs located on either side of the outlet between the screws. Well, apparently if that tab is broken on the side and the circuit can't get through so it overloads your breaker box and the switch flips off. I tried to get a picture of the broken tab but the stupid phone wouldn't focus correctly. So... here is my attempt (sorry again!)

So, the moral of the story is:
1. inspect outlets when you're buying them. Make sure everything is there and nothing rattles around
2. Black on brass, white on silver...not too hard to remember, it seems to make sense now that I know it.

Well, that's my failures for now. Hopefully I wont make any more when it comes to electrical work. I'm sick of lamp light showers!