I put the last piece of tape on the wall and smoothed it out with my trowel. There was just one more thing I wanted to fix...that one piece of Sheetrock by the door, the one with the light switch dangling through the hole...I just didn't like the way it fit up against the door. I carefully pried it off of the wall and with a really big sigh, put it on top of another piece of Sheetrock to use as a template. This time I would use a smaller width Sheetrock so it would fit better in the space. For once I actually cut it out with no mistakes and to my surprise it fit perfectly. I usually have to measure and re-measure, cut and re-cut. I screwed it on and went to pull the light toggle through the hole. I was having a little trouble...I jerked just a little too hard just a little too often and then I heard a little PLINK and the light went out. Oh, man!! Immediately I went to the breaker and turned it off. This shut off the power to the room, but what I didn't know was that the living room, hall and the front bedroom were all on the same circuit. Pretty soon the kids came running to find out what happened to the TV. K,s friend is an electrician, and she called him to help me figure out what went wrong and before I knew it he and his grandfather, a master electrician were at my door. They took a look and decided to come back in the morning with assurances that it would be safe to turn back on the power.
The next morning the electrician came out and tightened up the wire, which turned out to be hot, by the way, and showed me how to fasten the plastic light toggle to the inside of the joist. He left and I went out to run some errands. It was six o'clock before I was able to work on the room again. I tried putting the light toggle up against the joist, like he said, but it was very difficult due to the space constraints. I had been working on it for about thirty minutes, with the power off, by the way, when my screwdriver accidentally came into contact with the wire and a little explosion occurred. The light went out again. Well, this time I was already in a bad mood and this just threw me over the edge. I called all the local electricians in the book and no one would come out. I was going out of town the next morning, so something had to be done tonight. After I sat around feeling sorry for myself for a while, I approached my next door neighbor and asked him if he knew anything about electricity. He said he knew a little, and he got his tools and came on over. He spent about forty mins. trying to get the toggle attached to the joist, just as I had tried to do unsuccessfully, however he managed to get it done. Then he told me to turn the power back on on the breaker panel. I did that but there was no result. The light just didn't come back on. At this point I was envisioning having to stay home from my trip out of town to call the master elec. back in the morning. However he told me to go take a second look at the panel and make sure it was on. Guess what? In my panic, I was looking at all the switches that were off, not the little orange strips that indicate you have popped a fuse. And there it was. All that panic for nothing. I felt kind of foolish, but he didn't seem to think anything about it. I flipped the fuse and sure enough the light came on and the fan started turning. I breathed another big sigh, this time with relief. I'm so thankful I have such a fantastic neighbor.