it's the last 10% that kills you

Living room is painted, hearth is re-pointed and looks amazing, window frames are restained and poly-ed and look similarly amazing, and we've finally windexed away all the grime and construction dandruff from the windows. AND! We found some wall sconces that we can both agree on. (Yes, the house is to be sold, but old neuroses soldier on even in the face of this.)

So I set out this morning to install the light sconces in the new junction boxes we had put in. At first I thought I might be lazy and wire them up without turning off the breaker, i.e. just use the local lightswitches. However, my tester indicates that one sconce is "hot" no matter which switch of the two is in which position (on-on, on-off, off-on, off-off, wire is still powered) and the other sconce is hot if either or both switch is on.

Now, I'm not an expert electrician, but I'm pretty sure this ain't according to Hoyle.






Grrrrr.