I may have overstated my electrical abilities.

Sometimes, I worry that my life is made up of singular events, where I pretend to know something about something, and miraculously people believe me (and allow me enough time to futz around with whatever it is until I get it right). This happened recently. More than once.

A friend of mine just bought a house. Well, not just. He bought it a couple of months ago. It was a foreclosure — something that needed some significant renovations. It was livable, to be sure, but he had some grand plans. Those plans involved removing a wall, replumbing a bathroom, installing custom electrical outlets, lights, and in floor radiant heating.

When I was a kid, my parents built an addition to our house. It was an impressive thing, really. We all pitched in to help build this house. I, for one, was tasked with reviewing the journeyman electrician license requirements, and beginning electrical wiring…and wiring the house. I was 12. 11? Something. As it turns out, that kind of experience sticks with you. Who knew.

Ten years later (give or take), I was able to pretend that I knew what I was doing all over again.

It started innocently enough. Providing advice. That I can do. I can make things up and hope that they’re true — the logic of electrical wiring is simple enough. Plus, when you’re stuck, that’s what the instruction manuals are for. (Strangely enough, the only time I read the manual is when installing hardware in a house, or for whatever car I happen to be driving at the time).

Then, we needed to move some outlets and add some GFI outlets. Alright, that can’t be too hard. I mean, sure, there wasn’t a clear indication of where the wires were supposed to be, and I had to move outlets while patching things through to the other side of the room (trust me: it’s safe. I’m qualified). But there were wiring diagrams in the box.

Then….well, the fun part. Wiring the radiant infloor heating, thermostat, and rewiring the light switches so that they made logical sense again. We didn’t have the right wire nuts, so the connections weren’t at all tight enough (and continued to disconnect). Don’t worry, I fixed it.

Finally…the three way switches that were wired on two different circuits (I’m pretty sure that can’t be safe). You’d be surprised at how many times you can wire two light switches incorrectly before you finally work out the logic of how a switch is supposed to work. (In my defense, I hadn’t ever done it before, and I couldn’t see any of the wires that I was working on). On the positive side, I only had to run for a mile given how many times I walked up and down the stairs trying to test the outlets.

Although…at the end of the night, the bathroom was properly wired, and we had built and tested an additional circuit for the infloor heating.

And nobody ended up in the emergency room.