August 2013: Garage, August 1, 2013

The stupid garage security light.  Oh, the pain and misery.

I don't know what to do about it.  So, I decided to check the wiring.  The first step?  Turn off the power!  I might be an idiot, but occasionally I have moments of genius!

The person who wired it was kind enough to not only fill out the guide on the door, there is actually a "G" labeled on the break itself!  So, I could easily flip it.

And then I went and checked the connection in the garage, and all the wire nuts were in place.

So I took the light off the wall, checked all the connections, cleaned out a ton of cobwebs, and put the light back up on the garage.  I tested it, and it didn't work.  Drat.  And then I got a brilliant idea!  I went back to the breaker box, turned the breaker back on, and came out the garage, and flipped the switch to text again, and voila!  Nothing happened.  (I later took a walk to Home Depot and bought a new security light, as well as a thing to test for power.  That way I can see if power is getting to the light at all, just to narrow down the problem.)

I wasn't going to let my day end up completely unproductive in terms of nothing changing!  I had some holes in my wall--remember the previously mentioned ants?  I guess the wood peckers in the neighborhood like to eat those ants--or some other bug that lives in the wood in my garage.  I had two beautifully drilled holes in the garage.  See?

The one on the South side (the lower picture) I noticed from inside my garage.  It was a moment of, "Hold that thought.  Is that daylight?!"  Well, alright.  So I took clear caulk from a project this winter, tried to clean out the tip, and put caulk in.

Alas, my hands were too dirty for a picture, but I managed to squeeze caulk out of the bottom of the tube, all over the caulking gun, which resulting in my getting it all over my hands (so I just used my hands to finish filling the holes).  Cleaning caulk off of things is harder than you might realize.  Nevertheless, my garage is now hole-free, and hopefully ready for cleaning and scraping now!