My neighbor, across the street from me, was having an electrical issue. In the past, I would have jumped to the rescue but the older I get, the less comfortable I am with messing with electrical, especially when it's not my own. I put up light fixtures, ceiling fans, outlets, light switches, etc. but beyond that, I keep my hands off.
I stumbled upon an independent electrician a few years ago, this guy is everything you want. He's fast, he's quiet, he's very detailed oriented, he shows you the work he's done, he discusses your options, why he chooses to use a particular item and he's extremely affordable. So I recommended this guy to my neighbor and I said "hey, if you have him out, let me know b/c I wanna make it worth his trip so I can have him install a whole home surge protector."
This is what I had in mind and, amazingly (in my mind), this is exactly what he installed which was $350 installed. Which, to me, was totally worth it because I've gotten quotes (over the phone) for over $1,000 to install one of these and I've spent a ton (over the years) on surge protectors which have kinda worked. The reason I wanted to this is because we got a lot lightning strikes near our house, we've had a lot of brown outs, lots of surges in my area and I've wanted to do this for a long time.
Next project, I kinda feel like a failure on this one b/c I had to call in the electrician to help me out. So, our kitchen has recessed lighting everywhere expect for over the island. Over the island it had an outdated, old fashioned, pretty ugly fluorescent tube fixture. So, I purchased a replacement, led, flush mounted disc to match the recessed lights.
So my new fixture comes in, I go out to the garage to turn off the breaker to begin the installation but the breaker won't shut all the way off. It won't go back on though either so it's borked. . . arrrgghhh! So I call the electrician, he comes out, I show him what's going on and he confirms the circuit breaker is toast. He yanks off the panel cover and gets it replaced in like 10 minutes. . .he said "I'm going to check the others while I'm here okay?" "Oh hell yes please!" And he finds another one that just popped itself and won't return. He replaced that one, in like 5 minutes. Then he said, well, you're paying for an hour of my time, you got anything else for me? I said, okay, since you mentioned it, let me show you this light fixture. . .
He took the old one down and he said "okay, well, you're supposed to have a box up in the ceiling here and you don't have one, how about if I do that since I'm here? Done and he installed the fixture as well. $150 later and everything was done. Again, I know this is a DIY thread but there you go.