Meet Susan! Susan does dimmers.
My dear, sweet husband very recently roped a friend of his into helping him change our master bedroom light fixture. The old one held two, 60-watt bulbs, shaded by frosted, amber glass, and did not make use of the lovely reflective qualities of the white cathedral ceiling. My room felt like a cave! The new light fixture is a chandelier-type that holds four, 100-watt bulbs. Ahhhhhh! Sweet light. But. . . maybe a bit too much light at times.
Enter the simple solution: a dimmer switch. Today, I took over a small portion of the honey-do list and had the switch installed in just a few minutes.
First things first. Turn off the power to the light switch! I did not take a picture of this because our breaker box is in the garage, behind a bicycle, which has been hung on the wall for winter storage. I couldn’t manage to add a camera to an already tricky situation.
This is all I needed to complete this simple project:
After power has been shut off to the switch, remove the screws holding on the face plate:
Then, remove the screws holding the old switch:
Pull the switch out of the box and locate the three wires that need to be disconnected:
Different switches will have different ways the wires attach, but they should all be pretty simple to figure out. This one had screws that needed to be loosened to remove the wires from around them.
After checking the directions for my new switch, I attached the bare wire to the ground screw, which was green. The red and black insulated wires could be attached to either of the screws on the side, so I didn’t have to worry about mixing them up. Attaching the wires to the dimmer switch was a breeze:
Push all the wires back into the wall and then shove the switch in there and attach it with the screws. Now, don’t be like me. I installed it upside down. DOH! Oh well, it is an easy fix. It works just fine, but down is “on” and up and is “off” and that is just wrong and I can’t live with it that way:
The only thing better would be a dimmer with a remote! Disclaimer: Susan is a professional photographer, don’t let the perfection of Susan’s photos keep you from submitting your brag!
Interesting! I had no idea it was that easy. That might be a nice idea for the hall light my boys use as a night light.
I’d highly recommend putting a picture of ANY breaker box in this just to be safe. Perhaps an explanation of how to figure out which breaker goes with the light you want for those without labeled breakers.