Have you ever noticed how some electrical outlets in your home look slightly different from the rest? Instead of a smooth plate, these outlets feature two small buttons, often colored black and red.

Those little buttons found on many outlets are part of a device called a ground-fault circuit interrupter or GFCI. Here's ...

When you layer that mistake on top of aging wiring, shallow metal boxes, and three‑prong outlets with no real ground, you get a kitchen that looks modern but behaves like it is still in the 1970s.