DIY Lighting Wont Turn Off

So I pulled out a double ballast, old style, bought a t8 from home depot.... Noticed there were two sets of black/white. One was hot, the other Not. Noticed that the hot wires were hot even with the switch off, put in the new stuff, only hooked up to the two live wires, and now my florescent lights wont off. So obviously ive made a mistake by not using somehow the two other non live black/white wires, what should I do?

 

Welcome to the forums.

You didn't reconnect the same you removed it. You must have opened all the connections.
You are dealing with a switch loop. The diagram should explain it for you.



Substitute your fluorescent fixture where my bulb is.

 

Let me see if I understand this correctly...Balast white chord to the live white chord....balast black chord to the non live other side.....next wire live black to unlive white for the last two..... the only thing weird, is that my live wires come out of what looks like a switch side...

 

It's actually good you made this mistake. Now you can see how a device is switched.
If you connect source hot and neutral to a light, it will light, but you can't turn it off.
You must "break" one of the wires coming from source. It cannot be the neutral, ever.

So you will connect source neutral to the light as usual. The source black will not be connected to the light. Source black will go down to switch using the white wire, and come back up using the black wire... connect to fixture black, and you have a switched fixture

Edit: you posted before I got in.

 

One more thing, although often overlooked the white wire in the "switch loop" needs to be re-identified to black (or some color other than white, grey or green) by the use of tape or permanent marker. This needs to be done at both the light fixture and at the switch to be code compliant.