Is This Up To Code?

Today I was all excited.

I had patiently waited in anticipation for Canadian Tire christmas gift certificates to purchase a new light fixture for my bathroom to replace the existing one. The current fixture is the kind with the bare light bulbs that get all dusty, and then the dust burns on to the top of them. and they look dirty all the time. Well anyway ... last week I finally purchased the "chosen" lighting I had ordained months earlier.

As I said to begin with ... today I was all excited to get my new lighting up. Dave and I began with all the proper steps.

We:

• went to the breaker box and turned off the electricity to the bathroom
• removed the lightbulbs (without breaking them)
• took down the front of the fixture
• and then ... we were utterly disappointed and confused

Instead of there being a round fixture box in the center of our wall, there was a normal outlet box off centered to the left. Instead of the wiring being pulled through the provided hole in the center of the current fixture, it was pulled through the small hole provided for mounting the fixture to the wall. Why the electrician did this we don't know. There is no stud in the middle of the wall to prevent putting the proper box in. Our conclusion ... well we're not sure what they were thinking!

What now? The fixture we bought (that is perfect for our bathroom & will match the other fixture in front of the toilet) needs the center box and will show the existing hack job. We could get an electrician to put in the proper electrical box, but that means a lot more work and a bit of dry walling to fix the current "problem".

So today I WAS all excited to put up my new light fixture ... until we decided to put the old fixture back up until we had to time tackle a bathroom renovation.