sMoRTy71, Junior Electrician

Friday, we started having a problem with our refrigerator. When I would open the door, the light would seem to flicker on and off. At first, I thought the lightbulb was bad; however, after a few minutes, I realized that the whole thing was losing power.

I checked the breaker box and couldn't see anything obvious. So I did the only thing a super handyman like myself could do -- I plugged it into an extension cord, plugged it in across the kitchen and left it alone for two days.

So today, I decided to figure out what was going on. I thought it was the outlet that was bad; however, after pulling the whole thing apart, I determined it wasn't the outlet. Figuring that I had exhausted all of my electrical skill, I decided to call in a professional. Fortunately, the professional is my dad, so it didn't cost me anything.

With a cellphone in one hand (my dad lives in WV) and a voltage tester in the other, my dad was able to step me through the process of troubleshooting the electrical problem. After a little bit of trial and error (taking apart two outlets, disassembling the breaker box, checking each breaker for power), we were able to determine that I had a bad breaker.

I made a quick Home Depot run and got everything I needed to replace the breaker and replace a GFI outlet that I suspected was fried. After getting the parts, the whole project took about 30 minutes to complete. Of course, it took quite a bit longer to reset all of the clocks in the house.