Come help me solve the riddle of one taillight, all the instrument lights and more!

[freethebikes]

EDIT: SOLVED. It was a fuse after all. it was a tiny hairline fracture in one of the fuses that I didn't notice before. I believe it was the same fuse as the lighter. So there you have it: if you right taillight is out and all of the instrument lights are out, your fuse is out.

ORIGINAL QUESTION:
I have no carpets in the car and recently I painted the interior along with some other work. In the process I lost all my instrument lights, along with the right taillight (just the one bulb that turns on when you have your lights on). There is a loom of wires running through the car that I had to move around a bunch when painting, however none of them seem outwardly damaged.
Here are our clues:

It's not the bulb (I tested it, it works)
All of the fuses seem intact.
The turn signal still works, I'm not sure about the brake light.
The licence plate light doesn't work but that could have been out for some time without me noticing.
I read somewhere that it might be the actual light switch. Could a faulty switch produce all three of these?

Thanks in advance for you help. Please ask if you would like more details about anything. I'm certain that together we can beat this.

I tried to search for this, but the search seems pretty useless on this forum: just brings up Colorado Chit Chat or whatever for everything because apparently people in Colorado managed to mention every topic in their thread.

[Gregs///M]

Check your fuses with a test light and ignition on, not digital multimeter.

Down the ETM (electronic troubleshooting manual) and go to work testing circuits, I think you have multiple shorts or open connections. Don't just test one bulb, test every bulb that does not work.

[freethebikes]

Hmm.. I'm looking for something more Sherlock Holmes than "Test everything in the car and fix everything that is broken". I would think that there has to be one uniting point of failure because in my experience it's unlikely that three things break at the same time from different problems.

I also wouldn't think that it would be a fuse because I don't think there are separate fuses for the right and left side and the lefthand taillight works just fine.

So far the light switch is the closest thing that I could find that would make one taillight, licence plate light and the instrument lights to go out at the same time but I didn't move the switch at all during the job so there doesn't seem to be a logical reason for it to break.


thanks again for your help everyone.