We have spent 3 days fixing a wiring problem in our attic, which is one of those low-profile roofs, requiring a body to be jockey-sized. Or smaller. Today—noonish—we got the sucker. When wiring has to connect across an old ‘addition’ boundary, ie, old to new section, strange things can happen, especially regarding accessibility of things.

In this case we had a three-way switch that wouldn’t three-way successfully, and it wasn’t possible just to pull all the wires (which were trapped at the joining of old section to new) and rewire. It was a matter of logicking it out, involving about 8 wires, including what are called ‘travelers.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiway_switching

Travelers carry current to a second switch in the system—say you want to be able to turn on the same set of lights from two widely separated switches, at opposite ends of the kitchen.

Well, after a great deal of pretzeling and misery—the problem lies in a broken wire. And we now have an on-off from either end of the kitchen, in a switch plate that also serves a fan and used to serve an overhead light. Now we have sleek in-ceiling lights in place of the old fluorescent fixture with the broken wire, and the kitchen is acquiring color — more paint—and light. Lots of it.

Meanwhile the city has decided (by throwing darts at a board, I think) to repair certain east-west streets in our 2 mile section, at random intervals, and to also lane-restrict some repair work in alternate lanes on the north-south arterials, and if you think you have successfully escaped those, up on the east-west arterial, they have blocked the left lane without warning people to get over soon enough, which results in traffic lines piling up blocking off people who have just escaped the east-west restrictions crossing the likewise bollixed-up north-south arterials.

Can you say—city traffic management and our broken wiring system do seem to have a lot in common. I hope by tomorrow it too may have found a resolution, as we did by replacing one 15′ length of house wiring.