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@lemmy.world
    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.