Tom and I have outdone ourselves in the "we're so crap at DIY" stakes this week. We bought a light shade from Ikea at least 6 weeks ago. Ikea is Tom's least favourite place in the world, so we try to avoid it unless there's something we specifically need that we know we can get there. I'd spied the light shade in the catalogue (plus a groovy hatstand) so we made the trek to Rhodes to get them. The light shade is made up of lots of plastic, bendy pieces. I put them all together about a week after we bought it, and then the light sat on our dining room table for about 4 weeks gathering dust.
Finally, on Sunday whilst it was still daylight we went upstairs to install it in our bedroom. The whole wire connection part looked very straightforward in the instructions. Unfortunately, once we unscrewed our existing light fitting, we were confronted with rather more wires than the instructions catered for. A quick call to my brother-in-law (he's an electrician) made us realise we were way out of our depth. We'd lost track of what wire went where so basically we couldn't install the new light, couldn't put the old one back and had 8 live wires coming out of our ceiling! Whoops.
Tom had to go out to Bunnings (his second least favourite place in the world) and buy some coverings for the wires. With some help from the trusty sticky tape, he had the live wires covered up. Yet when we flicked the switch on our mains board to get our upstairs lights going again... nothing happened. Typical. Thankfully our lamps got us through a couple of nights before my best friend's Dad - Bob the electrician - came on Tuesday morning and sorted it all out. We have learned our lesson - when it comes to stuff that can kill you, always use a professional.
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