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?

  • @sramder
    3•1 year ago

    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.

    • Uprise42OP
      3•1 year ago

      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.

      • TWeaKEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Make sure you use insulated tools, you should also prove dead, ideally with a proper proving device.

      • @sramder
        1•1 year ago

        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.