...really WAS, things would be a lot easier.
I just went to replace a flickering CFL in the little office upstairs. when I unscrewed the glass from the light fixture (one of those ones with a little nipple that holds the glass on) the whole thing fell down in my hand. OK, so someone didn't use a nut they were supposed to, no big deal. Look up inside box, surprised to see Romex with ground. (not totally surprising, because that side of the upstairs was remodeled at some point in the vague past. Because it was done with paneling instead of drywall, I thought it had been done in the pre-Romex era, but I guess not.) OK, that's good - possibly one less thing to address on my future rewiring project. I correctly wire the ground to the fixture, hang correctly from box. Pull cover plate off of switch out of curiosity, find also modern Romex with ground - but only one cable in box. So I have a switch leg. But there was only one cable in the ceiling box as well... must be junction box in attic. @#$#$%. Remove receptacle directly below switch, again out of curiosity, and also find only one cable entering. WTF? must be a bigass box up there. Hoping for cool day to investigate. But here's the kicker - even though there is three wire romex in the box, the ground and neutral are all connected together. Check light in hallway, same thing, one romex entering, this time the ground is clipped. Pull switch that controls it, which is on an original wall, that one is still the original cloth-insulated NM. That must be one heck of a junction box in that there attic.
Here's what I find really hard to believe - the PO's of this house did not do any electrical work, they told me so. The guy that they bought it from was a CONTRACTOR.
The appeal of this house to me is that the PO's did very little work to it therefore very little is messed up. However, everything that I've seen that looks like it WAS done since the house was built, has been WRONG.
I doubt the guy is still in business because the people we bought the house from were there for something like 18 years. However, I feel like I ought to go down to city hall and get the guy's name just in case he still is, just so that I never hire him. I hope that he also didn't do any work as "favors" for the neighbors...
How hard would it have been to simply wire up all the new work correctly, and then when it was all done run a ground wire to a water pipe or something? Would it *really* have been that difficult? (how in the HELL did this ever get inspected?)
nate