Most of the year, there are two small lamps hanging in front of the French doors. (I thought for sure I’d have photos of them, but now I can’t find any.) The two lamps cords have been half-tidily bundled together and plugged into a single extension cord so that they can be controlled with a single switch (and a timer).

When it’s summer and the French doors are open as much time as they’re closed, the lamps come down. Otherwise we’d be hitting our heads against them all the time when we walk in and out – they’re at perfect face height for me.

Now I’ve finally fixed the mess and spliced the two cords together with a tidy little box. No more bundled-up cables, no more cable ties, no more double plugs. Super neat and tidy. Now the lamps get packed away until autumn, and I will forget about them, and then I will get to be pleased about this fix all over again.

The only hard part was stripping the wires. The wires inside the lamp cords were coated in some kind of extra-hard, shiny, translucent plastic. And it was really hard to strip off. It just would not let go. I guess it really wasn’t meant to be worked on by casual DIY:ers. Several attempts to strip it off with pliers all failed, and I ended up breaking or cutting the wire inside. Then I thought it might go better if I softened the plastic with heat, but that didn’t make much of a difference at all. I ended up burning the coating off entirely. Which was interesting in and of itself, because the plastic didn’t want to burn easily, either: very fire-safe.