Let There Be Lights!

Switch outlets... convenient sometimes, but usually just silly. One of the fun quirks of our house is that there were no overhead light fixtures in any of the bedrooms. They had instead wired a receptacle in each room to a switch. This is useful to turn on a lamp upon entering the room, but not so great when you have to plug an alarm clock into that same outlet. Or if you want a little more light in the room than a small lamp can provide. The solution to this problem? Add overhead light fixtures! So I called in the dream team (my dad and grandpa) for support and we got to work.

I took a half day off work on Friday and they came down around 11:00 to start work. Luckily for us, the way the house was wired had the power coming first to the switch instead of going to the outlet. It wouldn't have been a huge deal had it been different, but this did make it a little easier to wire. We basically only had to mess with the wires in the switch box instead of both there and at the receptacle. (Take a look at these diagrams if you're wondering how that all works.)

We started by laying out where we wanted the fixtures (this was, of course, the center of the bedrooms... what do you think we are, animals?), finding all the necessary locations in the attic (where the wires to the switches entered the walls, mainly), and picking up supplies from the Lowe's down the street. The next part of the process was drilling holes in the headers above the switch locations and running wire (we matched the exiting 14-2 Romex) down to the switch boxes. This wire would then be tied into the switch and ran over to the location of the soon to be installed fixture boxes. To install the fixture boxes we stuck a screwdriver through the ceiling where we had marked the center of the rooms and then found that location in the attic. We then cleared the insulation from the area, traced the fixture box on the ceiling, cut out the opening with a drywall saw, and then installed the box with a 2x4 and screws. Amazingly enough we didn't really have any trouble with our proposed locations ending up right under ceiling joists or anything like that. We made really good time and got all the boxes installed, with wire pulled to them and everything, before dinner (but more on dinner later... that's another post).

Wire through the header down to the switch

New fixture box installed

Wire pulled through the new fixture box (hasn't been trimmed yet)

But wait, there's more! We have four bedrooms, but installed five boxes... why's that? We added a special light over the stairs too! After dinner on Friday we worked on getting that fun thing installed. This meant more fun times on ladder for me (I don't like ladders... I had a bad experience). The setup on this was a little different than the others. The fixture box was basically like the others, but instead of running wire down to one of the switches, we just connected in an existing fixture box already in the hall. This worked because we just wanted the light to come on with the other hall lights. But while that part was easier, the light fixture install itself was also a little more challenging, mainly because it's heavy and I was standing on a ladder. Love it. But hey, we got it installed and it looks glorious! (This really does add a lot of light to the stairs, it's not as dark as the pictures look - I just took them that way so you could see the fixture better. Also, the cords are a little crimped right now, but they'll straighten out from the weight of the lights.)

My dad and grandpa stayed over that night and we continued work the next day (after a nice breakfast and a trip to Sam's Club). We got all the fixtures installed in no time - we bought a ceiling fan for our bedroom and then three of the same fixture for the other bedrooms - and my dad and grandpa headed home around 11:00am. That means we installed five new overhead lights where there were no lights before in less that 24 hours. Plus we took a nice break for dinner, went out for breakfast, went shopping, and did a few other small tasks. Talk about a productive day! (I did go back later with a can of spray foam and seal things up a bit, along with spreading the insulation back into the areas we had cleared it from. Definitely a good thing to do.)

The lights look great and we love being able to flip a switch to light up the rooms. It was a lot of work, and definitely not something that I would dream of attempting alone, but everything went smoothly and it was well worth the results.