Electrician in the House?

We have a lot of items on our "To Do" list for the house-- a list that seems to remain stagnant. We cross something off, we put something else on. During the summer, we had lots of issues with lights in the house. The light above the kitchen table, the light in the passage way of the kitchen, the upstairs bathroom light, and the blue bedroom light all decided during summer to quit functioning, including the blue bedroom light deciding with the most fantastic sparks coming from the ceiling fan. So we decided to take down the fans and the lights and replace them. We haven't picked out fixtures yet, but we have some basic bare-bulb fixtures that will do for the time being.

Will worked hard and figuring out how to get the lights down and the which cloth wire was the black and which was the ground and how to get the wall switch to work with a pull-chain fixture.

I flipped breakers on and off. Stirling supervised. By the end of the afternoon, we had replaced 3 fixtures and fixed a 4th. Will was feeling pretty proud of himself. I felt better that we weren't in such a fire trap. Something marked off the list!

Then, I noticed that the light no longer dimmed in the dining room. Will noticed that the motion light outside was always on-- two switches that we didn't touch. *Sigh* After all of that work, we will be calling an electrician to figure out what went wrong.... I guess I have to unmark that list.

Monday morning update: the dimmer switch and the motion light have healed thy selves! We won't be calling an expert! yea!