At first I was totally fine with just the one. And typically you assume that what you see is all there is. (I know my husband is cringing after seeing I started that last sentence with "And". Love ya, babe!) But for some reason, I felt compelled to ask if they had any more.
You'll never guess what the lady said. Well, maybe you will since I'm already leading you this way. She said, "yes, in fact there are five more at my house." Say, huh?!? Really?!?
So of course, I had to go out on a limb here and ask if I could buy them for the same price of $5 each. You know what? She said yes!
So maybe by this point you're thinking that there had to be something wrong with them like they didn't work or something. Turns out her husband is an electrician. He had been hired to replace these beauties that had been installed on another house for only a year and actually one of them was still in its original packaging.
So when I went to actually pick them up, sure enough, they were all there, laid out on his shop floor just screaming, "Aren't we pretty? Aren't we perfect for both the front and back of your house...especially for the mere cost of $25?" He even showed me they were in perfect working order.
Sigh...sounds great doesn't it?
So I'm about to hand over my $25 big ones feeling like I'm totally scamming the guy some how when he points out that I need to make sure of one thing. The light fixture boxes that the fixtures sit flush on that attach to the house need to be the length of the plate to keep the electrical components safe from the outdoor elements. (Bear with me, I'm talking about stuff I know little of other than the lesson I just learned on this.)
In this case, the base needed to be about 9 1/2 inches in length. Rather than have to return all of them in the event this didn't work out, I went home to measure (I lived less than 10 minutes away) and discovered the devistating news that ours were only a mere 7 inches which was totally not good.
Not ready to let this go, I looked into what it would cost/take to fix this. To put it bluntly, it would totally defeat the good deal I was going to score by a lot--like ridiculously. I continued to look for any other options with no success.
As of last night, I talked to Mr. Electrician and let him know I had to let them go. I was torn and totally contemplated buying them for a future home, because Lord knows we move A LOT. But that would go against my anti-clutter personality and there's too much risk with the movers...especially when it comes to garage type items. (I swear they put the worst packer in the garage).
Anyway, Mr. Electrician did have another person lined up that wanted to purchase them for $20 a piece, so it did work out for him at least. I'm quite flattered though that he was going to honor the $5 each price tag for me despite a more appealing offer that had been presented to him.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment