There is a grand total of 36 switches i think, 25 being upstairs, three on the landing by the front door, and the rest in the basement. My bedroom and my brother's bedroom both have two switches by the door, one for the light and one for the ceiling fan. And we both have switches for our closet lights on the outside of the closet. My parents' room has the two switches by the door too and the switch for the closet. They also have another switch inside their closet though, which is for the attic light, as the attic access is on the ceiling in their closet (just a plastered piece of drywall nailed to a 2X4 frame that covers the hole; no integral ladder). In their bathroom, they have a switch for the vanity light and then they have a 2-gang box with two Decor duplex switches, all for the exhaust fan/light. One's for the fan itself, another for the light, another from the heating element, another for the 7W C7 nightlight lamp inside the unit. Those are the only non-toggle switches in our house. My bathroom just has a light switch, fan switch, and vanity switch, all toggle. No fancy integral nightlight or heater.
The hallway has one switch by my bedroom door, all by itself. At the other end of the hallway there's 4-gang box with another hallway light switch at the far right, one of three switches for the practically never-used staircase chandelier next to that, a switch that controls nothing, and on the far left the switch for the chandelier over the island in the kitchen. The load-less switch goes to the same junction box as the island chandelier light switch does; a ceiling fan was intended to go there but we put the fan over the dining room table instead as a last-minute decision. So the switch controls nothing lol.
In the kitchen we have one switch by the sink that controls the light over the sink (make sense... lol). We don't have a garbage disposal though, so there is no switch for one. By the slider door in the dining room (technically the kitchen, dining room, and living room are all one room, a studio-type set-up, but you get the idea) there's three switches. Left switch for the deck light (70W PSMH), right switch for the PAR floods for the backyard (used to be motion-sensor but I replaced the motion sensor part with a wire-in "stem" photocell), and the center switch is for the light/fan over the dining room table. That's the only fan in the house without separate switches for the fan and light since like I said, the fan was supposed to go over the island. We rarely use the fan anyway lol.
At the landing by the front door we have three more switches, left for outside lights by the front door, center for outside lights by the garage, and right for the staircase chandelier. At the bottom of the stairs by the utility room, we have another cluster of four switches, far left is one of two switches for the garage lights (the other switch being inside the garage itself), second from the left is for the utility room (switch is on the outside of the utility room, I think since it's considered a closet by code, and there would be no good place for it inside the room anyway.). Third switch is for the "boob" light in the mini-hallway where the staircase, utility room, garage, and closet under the staircase meet. Switch to the right of that is the third switch for the staircase chandelier. About 5 feet to the right, there's a single switch for the other two "boob" lights in the basement. Then further down near where we have the computer, TV, and air hockey table, there's another single switch for the F17T8 wrap light (formerly a fourth "boob" light). And lastly, the laundry room has a switch for the light.
Actually, I did draw up a floor plan of the upstairs and downstairs of my house and posted it on LG in my McCann Lighting album. Check it out!
Ick! I hate stainless steel appliances. I don't like the look at all. We used to have a stainless steel sink, which I really hated. We have a deeper black granite sink that's much nicer and doesn't make a loud noise when the water is turned on and hits the sink. Our fridge is white and our sink, dishwasher, wall-mount microwave, and stove/oven are all back (not sure why the fridge is white and the rest are black, but it actually doesn't look out of place as one might think).
The ballasts I speak of are all Sylvania Quicktronics, same ballast used in my parabolic troffer (understandably, since my fixture came from the school lol) so they're great quality! I'll use any discounted electronic ballasts I get at the restore or whatever but whenever I actually buy new ballasts (as opposed to buying a hacked up fixture at the Restore with the sole intention of harvesting the ballast from it) I only buy Sylvania Quicktronic ballasts, as I did for the lights in my grandma's garage. Two have NOS NBF ballasts and one has a used LBF ballast from school, also a Quicktronic. Since I also used Sylvania lamps, the ballasts and lamps would be covered under warranty too! (Sylvania only warrants their fluorescent ballasts if their own lamps are used). The ballasts are old stock though so the warranty has probably expired anyway lol.
I did see the slimline ballasts from those louver-less louvered lights at the ReStore but I've never looked at the wiring of one before. And I only opened up one 4ft section to see the ballast so I only saw the connections at one end of the lamps (didn't pay attention anyway lol, was too busy looking at the ballast itself lol). Thanks! Yeah I'll eventually be taking down the last Western Electric light lol. The first two were kinda botched installations but I was able to get them up with a little improvising. The fixtures are designed to be chain-mounted with a cord coming out of them, so it's kinda hard to hard-mount them and hardwire them. I just drill a 7/8" hole for the romex clamp, which is no big deal (positioning it is though lol) and then drill holes for the screw to mount the light. And the reflector is held in by a screw that goes from the top of the light and down through the fixture and has an acorn nut on the end that secures the reflector to the light The problem is that you can't remove the acorn nut (or install it for that matter) without the screw endlessly spinning, so I ended up having to get long screws and actually screwing the reflector into the drywall! Kind of a sketchy installation, but I only did that to one of them lol.
I currently work at Dave's Marketplace, a locally own grocery chain in Rhode Island. My pay is $9/hour and I average about 9-15 hours a week. It's never the same. My most recent paycheck was $112 & change and the week before that was $70-something dollars. Wow sounds like you're a jack of all trades there!