Skillz

This post is really for Dad, who will be tickled to hear that I zapped myself twice last night trying to wrangle the wires onto the GFI outlet. In my defense, they were thick, maybe 10 gauge.

The green light means it's working :)

I am perfectly capable of swapping out an outlet or a light switch provided nothing unusual is going on in the box. But when I yanked this bad boy out of the box and discovered there were 3 black wires, 3 white wires, and a ground I might as well have found an octopus behind the wall:

Another phone call to Dad, who provided the following solution:




1 foot of 14 gauge wire and 2 wire nuts were apparently all I needed. I learned from the "master electrician" at Home Depot that this process is called pigtailing... I think he was trying to intimidate me with fancy terminology so I'd give up and just hire him to do my job.

Final Product! My fresh, clean, white outlet!