Hello, I just moved into this house and it’s a pretty major work in progress. One thing that’s perplexed me though is the front door.
We have a light switch inside that no one knows what it actually does. It’s right inside the door but it doesn’t turn on the porch light. That one is on the other side of the room.
We had a contractor over giving us quotes to install stairs and I asked his opinion. He pointed out the white around the door is not wood but a barely transparent plastic. He’s pretty sure it’s supposed to light up and the reason the switch doesn’t work is because the bulbs are probably burnt.
Issue with that is that I can’t find a way in to check that. It definitely is a very fragile plastic. Wouldn’t take much to break. But I’d like to not break it so I can replace the lights and put it back together. But I don’t see screws or anything. Anyone have any advice?
I see an outlet above the left of the door. Have you tested to see if the switch controls that outlet? Maybe something plugged in there long ago
First off does the switch even have power to it? The switch should be breaking the hot wire (hopefully). So one side of the switch should be hot. A non-contact voltage tester will tell you this very quickly and easily. They aren’t that expensive and a wonderful tool to have. Great for helping test and Trace or double checking the breaker is off before you lick the wires.
Does the light switch operate the sockets outside? Maybe a previous owner installed it for Christmas lights or something.
No we’re pretty certain that wire comes out in the basement. There’s almost an identical one directly underneath the house.
I did test it with the switch to be safe and it was a no go. It could be dead all around though. I don’t think that’s a outdoor cable
I’ve never seen lights like that, I imagine that translucent plastic is simply to let daylight in. Probably switched out the front door at one point and couldn’t find one the exact width so got a narrower one, filling in the gaps with that translucent material. I wouldn’t think the switch would have anything to do with it. Sometimes people just remove a light and don’t want to bother taking out the wire and switch and changing the box and patching the drywall.
I’m not seeing anything obvious from this side, are you sure there’s no access from the inside?
If not I would guess that you need to remove the strips from around the edges, similarly to deglazing a window.
Judging from the age of the surrounding hardware you’re going to be lucky if you find fluorescent tubes and an old “magnetic” ballast. Consider changing that out for some LED strip lights, it will be similar in cost and last much longer.
I’m redoing a lot of the lighting so that’s not a project I’m afraid to tackle. Last owner loved florescent lights so we’re removing them from the bedrooms and bathrooms currently.
Inside looks pretty much the same. My biggest fear is breaking it apart and not being able to reassemble it because it leaves a pretty big hole to get inside the house. If I can get in without breaking it I can fix whatever is in there.
Not sure when the door was installed but the house is 1880’s so it has quite a span to be from. I doubt it’s original but it can be quite old.
Make sure you use insulated tools, you should also prove dead, ideally with a proper proving device.
There’s no shame in a nice plywood patch, as long as it’s temporary.
Plastic probably isn’t a great long term solution anyway, unless you have a handy neighborhood Tap Plastics… those are large panels that need to be cut from a big sheet. It’s probably acrylic which starts out fragile and just get more brittle with sun exposure, cleaning chemicals, air, etc. ;-)
You could try to replace them with polycarbonate but I’d check on the price of getting some glass cut and laminated. You could even just turn it back into a window. Definitely seek advice on how to “reglaze” the windows from YouTube…
I tried to substitute modern silicone caulk for crummy window putty once. Then I cracked the glass and spent a week scraping out the very tenacious caulk. Turns out sometimes the old ways do work best.
Good luck.
