First Wiring Experience!

I am so proud of myself! Last evening I installed a new chandelier in my entryway. I was a little concerned that I would not be able to do it once I took the old light down. There was no electrical box that housed the wires, just a hole in the ceiling with two (fabric encased) wires poking through and there really wasn't anything to anchor the new light too! I knew the electrical wiring was a little old in the house, but I was not expecting it to be quite this old! There was no way to tell which was the live wire and which was the neutral. I stripped off some of the "fabric casing" to expose the wires and almost gave up at that point.(Yes, I turned off the power in the house first!) Then I remembered that Nathan (my brother) had done a lot of updating in his house, so he might know a thing or two about wiring in a new fixture. I called him up and lucky for me he was home AND he knew what to do! He recommended that I go out and buy a wire tester. We both figured I would probably need it again anyway! With my handy, dandy, new fangaled wire tester (which was a lot smaller than I expected) I figured out which wire was hot and which was neautral. Once I did that I turned off the power to the house again so I could go about installing my new light! Well, the next obstacle was trying to figure out how to attach the mounting bar to the ceiling without pulling down all the plaster! I carefully made the existing hole bigger, trying to expose some wood lathe or joists. I did manage to find some wood to attach one end of the mounting bar to and took a chance at drilling a hole in the plaster for the other end to attach to.....and lucky for me, I hit something solid for the second hole, also! Once I had the wires all strung through the chain on the chandelier I tried to attach the light to the mounting bar and realized that I had to run the wires through the small tube on the mounting bar, also. So, I had to unscrew the mounting bar from the ceiling and feed the wires through and then re-attach the bar. I matched up my hot and neutral wires, capped and taped them and then tucked them up into the hole as much as possible, put the dome over the hole and wires and tightened the whole unit together. Now the real test was upon me! I turned the power back on, put new bulbs in the fixture and flipped the switch! And..........it WORKS beautifully!! The lighting is so much brighter than the old fixture. I can actually see the ceiling and all the corners now! It is wonderful! I am so excited. And I am ready to tackle some more of these "do-it-yourself" projects! Maybe I will tackle some plumbing issues next! Afterwards, I went on a nice long bike ride, played with Bronx (our puppy), then curled up on the couch with Badger and Simba (our cats) and watched a little TV before bed. Of course, the new light was happily blazing in the background!! :)