We celebrated Epiphany with lots of extra light this year. Specifically, six recessed and dimmable LED lights that I had just finished mounting into our hole-pocked living room ceiling.
We had talked about this project with various levels of seriousness for a couple of years before there was any real motion. Our living room has wonderful natural light when the sun is up, but that still leaves eight months out of the year when you can hardly see anything. We've made do with table lamps plugged into the walls, but it really was a noticeable defect in our reading/seeing situation.
The project itself was straightforward enough--run electricity up into the ceiling, drill through the ceiling joists one by one, and then run wire to new fixtures. Unfortunately, this job was always stuck between the two perils of my discomfort with dying from self-electrocution if I attempted to do my own wiring, and also my cheapskate unwillingness to pay anyone else to do the work for us. (We actually did get as far as getting an estimate in December.)
Last Tuesday, having been thoroughly coached through the process by my father-in-law, and having been enticed by vague but exciting sounding extracurricular promises from my wife, I brought home a Lowe's bag full of electrical tools, shut off the power to our living room outlet, and opened it up.
I immediately called for backup.
"Joe, I'm supposed to be looking at a hot, a neutral, and a ground, and I'm only seeing a the hot and neutral. Let's say that I try to wire this switch without grounding it...is my house going to burn down right away, or will it happen overnight while we're all sleeping?"
My friend Joe, who loves working on DIY electrical projects, rushed right over. We didn't make any cuts on Tuesday, but we did assemble the whole electrical relay and tested it just from the outlet box and found one very wrong way to do it (loud pop and the light shutting off) and then the correct way, which confirmed that my lights and switch were incompatible.
After making a 6 AM Lowe's trip the next morning (my third one already, and I was hoping to just have to go in twice) Joe was back to help with the initial wire-fishing party the next morning. (As he observed, it's a lot of fun to practice these things when it isn't your own house that you're sawing up.) Joe is currently working from home, which isn't hard to do while you're pitching in with a DIY project. He's also the full time parent for his thirteen month old daughter while his wife works, so we had an extra visitor.
This is probably a good time to remember the reasons why I don't often attempt around-the-house projects. Those reasons are James, Owen, and Felix. Any room that is about to become a construction zone has to be a construction zone that is safe enough for a three-year old to pass through at any moment. We moved all of our furniture into the library, and they were in the way. We told them to stay out of the library while it was full of furniture, and they immediately all needed things from the library.
The now-empty living room became a echoing hardwood-lined shouting room. (I swear, Owen is louder in there than any of my power tools.) We attempted to bundle them all upstairs with movies and new Christmas toys, but they kept on showing up asking if they could have a turn yet climbing the ladder.
Did I mention that we are in the middle of potty-training Felix? (Yes, trying that again.)
And they have school. Or they are supposed to. We gave them Wednesday off completely, but they've been doing their regular schoolwork at the kitchen table while I've been on a ladder in the living room for the past two days, and it's hard to administer a spelling test while screwing in drywall patches.
Wednesday was the hardest day. As I mentioned, we had four children (and three adults) in the house that day, and J did a marvelous job of shifting her plans from being my co-electrician to full time babycare. (Joe's sweet little daughter made no bones about her preference for her father, though.) The bits of the job that I was most nervous about (getting the initial wiring run up to the first light fixture, finding a place for a switch box in our messy pipe and cable filled north wall) all went off without a hitch. We ended up stymied several times by seemingly simple problems, like finding a drill bit that could make progress through the ceiling joists. I ended up making a trip to Lowe's when I found that the right angle drill attachment I had bought for the job was missing a part (I had really hoped to only make three trips), and then had to go back when the replacement that I bought was only rated for fastening, not drilling (I was really hoping to only make four trips), and then back again when I opened up my bucket of joint compound and found out that it had gone hard/rancid. (I was really hoping to only make the five trips to Lowe's)
Joe had to leave after lunch, and I attended my church zoom meeting covered in dust. It became evident early in the afternoon on Wednesday that we weren't going to have any luck fishing through the ceiling joists without opening more holes, so I took out more of the ceiling as the hours ticked by. By suppertime I had the first length of wire fished through, and by the time Joe came back after all our kids were in bed we were ready to start hooking up lightboxes.
The easiest and simplest part of the project, by far, was running the electric line from box to box. WAGO connectors are nearly idiot-proof. It was about 9:30 on the night of Epiphany (having started the day at 6 AM) that I ran down to the basement and flipped the power to the living room back on. And there was light. Dimmable light. We blasted all six glorious lights and looked about at each other.
(Turns out that our living room is really filthy.)
The last two days have been smoother, although I was really hoping to only make the six trips to Lowe's. I framed all my ceiling patches and did a first mud layer yesterday, then spent the morning sanding and doing a second layer today. We'll see how it dries, but I think that I'll most likely leave it as it is until February and take up my father-in-law on his offer to do the final coat when they come up to visit.
Still, it doesn't look to bad. I owe big thank-yous to Dennis, Joe, and J. Thanks so much to each of you. And also, thanks to our kids for being patient these last few days. But seriously, that dimmer switch is not a toy. Just bump it up or down a bit if you need to, but then leave it alone.
