Electrical : Part 2 of 23

So I posted pics of the installed GFCI here....  (Click on me, right here, right now).  This makes my electrical line profoundly more sensitive to problems - which it is having.  To figure out where the snafu is we are breaking it down into baby steps.  Whenever the entry way light is flipped on in the kitchen, the GFCI blows. First step :  we started with the switches. When you take the cover off you may see that all three are from different manufacturing eras, different materials and none are what you can buy in 2013.  Of the three switches, only two actually turn on anything.  We replaced the two switches.  They are certainly old. The wiring makes me "nervous" to say the least but I am feeding off the confidence of the fellow helping me. He basically says : yeah, you live in an old house that has some old things, get over it and we plug onward.

Second step : After replacing the working switches the GFCI still blows when the entry light is turned on.  So next stop is to evaluate the fixture.

The minor, small issue is that this line controls outlets and fixtures in four rooms of my house.  If this one light fixture is not the culprit we have alot of detective work to do.  Fun! What is life but a monster house project to-do list? 

Quick guess. Which is the offending switch?

I love electrical work.  I love taking off covers and seeing wires like these powering my house.

  

Pretty sure the Bryant ceramic switch on the left is from my house's early electrification.  The other is "Slater". The third I didn't replace is a Sears. 

This sort of stuff just warms my heart.  Dirty. Funky. Electrical. 

Negotiating with a man - Part 1 - Electrical

I think I mentioned in passing I am seeing a fella.  Great guy. GREAT guy.  The only problem is that he is involved with an "independent" woman... me.  A somewhat unconventional woman leading a somewhat conventional life. 
He has a skillset that I covet.  He has 35 years of home building and renovation under his belt.  Damn.  So, when I have say -- a light in my bedroom that flickers on and off as Wilder walks in the room directly above--obviously an electrical snafu of some sort that is high on my freak-out scale, he looks at it as an easy adventure and repair he can do. 
We are still negotiating on this sort of stuff.  I have issues with - let's see for starters - being taken care of.  Being paid for.  Being bought.  Being dependent.  I think those are adequately loaded words for starters on how I feel.  So when said fella says he wants to "look at" my electrical as I head off to an appointment I think "yeah, that is fine".  Go ahead and look and tell me what you find. 
Return a few hours later and get an email communique that he added a GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) to the line so that will go off if there is a short before the breaker trips. A GFCI monitors the amount of current flowing from hot to neutral. If there is any imbalance, it trips the circuit. It is able to sense a mismatch as small as 4 or 5 milliamps, and it can react as quickly as one-thirtieth of a second. It adds a level of electrical sensitivity/safety to wires that seem to be having an issue before we figure it all out and fix it.   
OK.  There is a difference between looking and doing.  He acted. 
And I am torn, since I hate electrical problems and he just took care of a portion of it. 
The GFCI tripped last night and I went down this morning to reset it.  I was gone this weekend so did not see what he had done.  He spent 30 minutes and a lot of hand motions explaining how this all works to me over the weekend, without me seeing the actual product. So that all made sense as he told it and I expected to see the addition of the GFCI downstairs that I now needed to reset.   When I went downstairs and saw this... I just laughed.  Somehow when he explained this it was all simple.  HA. This is not simple.  None of it. 

Above is the part I laughed at.  Not the actual lovely GFCI (below the white outlet to the left of the electrical convolutions) but this box of wires.  Yup. This is why I don't (yet) touch electrical.  I have the feeling I will be soon, however...