Bright Ideas

When we added on a second story to our house a few years ago my wife called about building permits. We were fairly shocked when we were told that we couldn't get one. Not because they didn't trust us to do something like major structural work ourselves, but because the didn't issue them. We live in a world of unregulated building and remodeling. There are codes, but nobody to check them. You're on you own, just don't do anything stupid and burn down your house.
This was initially pretty shocking. Then we really started to look around our neighborhood. The guy who had a pretty significant addition built onto his travel trailer? Probable didn't get a permit. The second story bathroom that had the waste stack running on the outside of the house? Probably no permit for that. The family with the second story addition to their single wide complete with massive porch cantilevered over the duck pond? Nobody anywhere would issue a permit for that. Ever. So yea, if we followed sound building practices, we were in the clear.
I continue to use that common sense approach to my remodeling, both finished and in progress. Take for instance the issue of transitional lighting in the bathroom. I couldn't install proper fixtures because I needed to do work around the boxes. Make the drywall pretty. I couldn't just use a floor lamp for lighting because my wife would have killed me, perhaps by tipping the lamp over into the tub while I was in there to make a point about how unsafe it would have been. Perhaps. So I went to the hardware store and wandered the lighting section for a while to find a solution. After several hours of peaceful contemplation I picked up a cheap wired bulb socket. Two wire nuts later and I was done. Very inexpensive transitional solution. I have the light I need to do the work it took me years to do, the light isn't in the way of the aforementioned work, and my wife is happy as a clam because when she flips the switch, the light comes on. She can just not look up and can go on pretending that she isn't bathing in the middle of a multi-year construction project. Problem solved.