I made a lot of progress yesterday when I added the additional lighting to my accessible closet, but I didn’t complete it because I came across a pretty big problem and had to find a problem for it. So far, this room had only one light in the ceiling, and that was the light that was attached to the ceiling fan. I do not want a ceiling fan in this closet, so the plan was to remove the fan and replace it with a chandelier and then add several recessed lights to give the room additional lighting.
Here is the only light on the ceiling fan that I have worked with so far …
The lighting is not only inadequate, it is also a yellow light, so that the closet looks grubby to a wallpaper colors. For this reason I can’t stand yellow lighting for this reason. I love color and I don’t like my colors to be washed out, so I prefer white lighting.
My working day started smoothly. I had all the holes cut for the lights at lunchtime.
This was fairly easy with this Mikwaukee adjustable perforated cutter (affiliate link). It fits in to cut holes from 2 inches to 7 inches, and this plastic shield is delivered, which catches the dust when cutting.
It definitely made the process faster and easier, but if I’m honest, I would rate it 4 out of 5 stars. While the plastic shield caught about 95% of the dust, he definitely did not hit everything.
In addition, these blades seemed too blunt pretty quickly. I was able to cut all the holes that I needed, but after about four holes the cuts seemed to become rougher and rougher with every additional hole. And the blades kept dissolving, so I had to use one key key to tighten the blades after cutting every hole.
I think the tool could use an improvement, but it did the job. And it did much faster and easier than any other tool or process that I used in the past to cut holes for lights.
At the end I cut holes for two lights on each side on the cupboards and a hole over each device.
I let someone ask me why I was not planning to add three lights to each side in the cabinet area. The reason for this is that this climate system ventilation on the left is exactly where I would have to give a light if I had added three on each side. And me not wants to move ventilation.
But I added an additional light to the door. The cabinet cabinet will therefore have five additional lights and the central chandelier when everything is said and finished. That will be a lot of light.
At this point it was so smooth that I expected to break for lunch and then come back and take about 15 minutes to climb the attic and to run the cabling from every hole to the next. In theory, this step should have been incredibly simple. What I had not noticed is that the entire area was from the pink line to the window wall in this area, which protrudes from the front of the house and the roof above this area is incredibly low.
I had three cables that I had to add in this section, but when I was in the attic, I realized that it would not be as easy as I thought. In fact, it took me a while to find these two holes over the washing machine and the dryer. I couldn’t even see her until I looked at this area. And then I realized that, to get to them, I lying on the stomach and in this area I had to push about 10 feet under the super low roof, hoping that I could get to the end while I dragged three wires into my hand and then wrote back without turning around. And of course I would have to do it all without laying a foot or knee through the dry wall.
I not only questioned the practicality and my ability to do so, but to do this, I also had to deal with my phobia with closed rooms. I sat there in the more open room of the attic and stared at this low area for a good five minutes and tried to calm down and do it. But the longer I was up there and stared at this area, the more panic I felt. I went mentally in the opposite direction when I had to go to do this. When I climbed out of the attic, I felt like shortly before a full -blown panic attacks. My fear of small, closed rooms is the reason why I’ve never crawled under our house. I will never go down there.
I remember years ago when Matt and I saw the show Fear Factor. I loved watching all of these crazy challenges, such as eating insects, the head in clear acrylic boxes filled with insects, etc. And if a challenge included a small, closed room with the additional water element, it was a difficult no for me. These would send me to a complete panic. During these challenges, Matt would always look at me when I buried my face in my hands and asked: “You okay? You will make it?” He always made fun of me and joked that I am the only person he knows that he could drown while he looked around a TV show and without a single drop of water around me.
And when I hadn’t to deal with water in this situation, I had to deal with other factors that I just couldn’t get past my head. What if I put in there and panicked so much that I couldn’t move? Can you imagine that I have to call 911 and explain the situation to you? “I put in my attic, in panic and I need someone to save me!” I just couldn’t do it.
In the end, I re -evaluated the situation to find out how to bring the wires from hole to hole, around and over all ceiling beams and other frames. Finally I had to cut three additional holes that have to be patched.
The good news is that the patching of these holes will be pretty simple because I have all these perfect little circles of the dry wall with which I can fill them.
Anyway, these are the lights I will use. They are not technically used. They sit flush to the ceiling.
And since you are only 1/2-inch thick and you have guided so that you don’t get hot, you can bring them practically anywhere, even directly under a ceiling bar.
This is the brand I use. You have five different temperature settings, and I always put mine on the 5000K setting (daylight).
When I did all of this, I was rather extinguished both physically and mentally. You can see the holes that need to be patched here.
When I did all of this, I almost persuaded myself to leave the middle light exactly where it is. The challenge here is that the cable from the switch is too short to move this connection merging six inches back.
I tried to agree, but about an hour later after my nerves had calmed down a bit, I decided that I just didn’t agree. You can see how outside the middle it is with the center sections on the side walls.
So I went forward and removed the connection box. I thought that was pretty easy, but it was a challenge to get out because it had these side areas that protruded with the nails.
I have mutilated the dry wall a bit that get it out of it.
Fortunately, I can be able to cut a six -inch hole and then use one of the circles of the dry wall that I have to pick this area.
And I have to do a new wire from the switch to this center box that I had not planned.
In the end I have four holes that I patched.
But to keep four holes in drywall wall is a small price to avoid that in my attic it gets stuck in a full -blown panic on my stomach when the low roof has to include me and call 911 to save me.
So I hadn’t hoped that this project would go, but at least the wires are available. And I should have the entire lighting installed at the end of the day. It will be nice to see what this room looks like with correct lighting.
