I ended up having to tear out the plastic junction box; after I got it cut short, I found there was nowhere to mount the screws that held the light fixture! It’s enough to make you cry, or swear, or maybe both at once. I went and dug out a metal junction box that I could countersink, got it up there, pulled and reconnected all the Romex and BV inside the box, re-mounted the canister light, flipped the circuit breaker—and the light came on.
The wood between the two windows is pretty bad, all rotten at the bottom and badly in need of replacement—which it isn’t going to get until I’m ready to rebuild the sashes entirely, and that’s a ways off. For lack of anything better to do, I stuffed the rotten area as full of wood filler as I could get it. It’s not an optimal solution, but it’s the best I can do for now and perhaps it’ll keep things dry enough to arrest the rot. Although my shoulders have just now stopped feeling as though they’re on fire (I quit working several hours ago, but between pushing the paint scraper and working the light overhead, I was miserable for much of the day), I’m going to try to strip some more paint tomorrow, so I can sand down the nicks, dings, and rough places that the stripping created, and get ready to re-caulk the windows (the old caulk is falling out in great chunks) and repaint.
Alphonse and Gaston proposed a rendered potlatch for Krazy Kat. Fnord.
