Electrical Home Work / Recessed Lighting Specific

[AJ]

I'll take some pics of our current layout and post them up tomorrow. Would love to just get some ideas and thoughts they we may not already have thought of. Also, big thanks for all the info so far!

[scheides]

Here's some pics of my mini remodel. Not very good quality pics, sorry!

http://www.scheides.com/gallery/house-work?page=5

If you're gonna do it yourself, be prepaired for the worst:

http://www.scheides.com/albums/house-work/DSC00145.sized.jpg

[carltalon]

My friend Jesse is a journyman electricion and is taking his masters soon. I think you've met him a few times. He would be willing to do some work for you. running the wires could be easy or hard depending on what type of floor joists you have. If you have a floor truss system it would be pretty easy. TGI's or 2 bys would requier alot of drilling. Can light are very exspensive to have installed. I think the going rate in new contruction is around $100 per can. I know this cause Jesse kept giving me crap when we installed 16 in my basment. Give me a call or shoot me a PM if you want to have him come take a look at it.

[JET]

The cans usually (maybe not all?) have a junction box on the side too, so they need to be installed from above. I want to do recessed lighting in the kitchen and the g/f wants to do some of the funky track lighting. I can get at everything from the attic, so it would be easy for me.

[rst95eclipse]

I would strongly suggest hiring a licensed electrician to do the work. I'm not trying to say that your work or someone's work on here isn't going to be up to par, but electricians are insured for any screwups. And lets face it, electricity isn't something that should be taken lightly.

On a side note, you'll have to rip up the drywall to run the wires properly and to mount the recessed cans. Let me guess, the drop down lighting is going to be the blue shaded lights. Those are really cool looking lights and using them can make the room seem to have a modernized look.

[carltalon]

The cans usually (maybe not all?) have a junction box on the side too, so they need to be installed from above. .
There are cans made for re modling that can be put in from the bottom side running the wire would be the only hard part placing the cans is easy.

[FattyBoomBatty]

I would suggest finding an electrician for this, it takes experience to be able to do it properly.

This is one of the most repressive statements ever. I was told once that if I've never buffed a car before, I should never try it because I didn't know how. Gimme a break, the only way to learn is doing it yourself.


For your recessed lighting, it's SO easy, do it all yourself, and only call someone in if you really screw it up bad. everything can be fixed in a home, there are products for everything.


I forgot to mention that if you have questions about code, get a book from home depot about wiring, and current codes. Doing electrical work is nothing to be worried about either, like some people have said, if you aren't sure where power is on, flip the main breaker to "off" and go crazy. just work during daylight hours and get a battery powered work light. 2 people is better than one, even if the other is just standing there reading from the book.
Good luck!

[scheides]

There are cans made for re modling that can be put in from the bottom side running the wire would be the only hard part placing the cans is easy.

Yea, they're called remodel cans! :) They're made to be installed from below the ceiling, they look like this:

http://www.costlesslighting.com/images/BL9ICR.gif

versus a new construction can:

http://www.costlesslighting.com/images/BL4N.gif

[Jana]

I'm pretty sure we are going to look at hiring someone to do the work. After our plumbing fiasco, I've decided we are not home improvement people... at least not right now.

Here's an example of the light I would love to have over our breakfast bar:
http://www.lampsplus.com/Products/s_Complete-Track-Kits/page_4/37451-84367/
(this particular one is nearly $300/light, so kind of out of my price range right now)

Here's an example of the recessed lighting we like:
http://www.lampsplus.com/Products/s_recessed-lighting/page_1/75640/

Carl, we would be interested in Jesse stopping out sometime and taking a look at what we'd like and maybe giving us a quote. Or PM AJ his phone number and he can call. :)

Thanks for the input everyone! I'm just tired of our townhome looking like all the others. I've done some painting on our main level, but need to finish by painting the upstairs & hallway.

[Enes]

Yes, basicly if you already have a light in the ceiling its going to be easy, if you don't its going to be a bit tougher. But fear not. You can use one of your outlets for source of the electricity.

Key is going to be figuring out how many lights you want, and how many appliances/lights you already have on the circuit so that you don't trip the breaker when you turn the lights on.

In the case of the outlet. You will need a line fish pulling thing not sure how you call it in English, a sharp razer blade a small chisel and a hammer. From the store get the choice of the remodel version cups, and remodel version outlet box along with a huge choice on controllers, if you want dimmer you will have to use standard lights, you can't dim fluorescents.
Open up your outlet, pull out the notch, cut the sheetrock where you want the switch to be, pull a 14-2 depending on what wire is in the outlet use the same wire again, don't go thiner or thicker.
So now you have power source, notch corner above the switch box into the ceiling, use the chisel and cut away wood about 1/3 of an inch, get a metal plate to protect the cable, make sure the hole is just big enough for the cable to be fed through and that the plate can be pounded into the 2x4's.

I would suggest getting a drill with a adjustable sheetrock cutting blades, basically you adjust the cutting blade how far you want the diameter of the circle to be and let the drill spin, its a lot cleaner than a sawzawl or handsaw.

Another key thing is going to be figuring out where your 2x4's are on the wall and on the ceiling, it would suck that you ruin your ceiling popcorn is hard to fix or you will have to scrape the whole ceiling and re-popcorn it again.

I did this in about 4 homes now, one home had 18 cans on one ceiling and another 12 on the second, we ran the wires to both locations so that you can turn on and off each lights individually at both locations, except then you will have to run 14-3 wires... made myself almost $1800 off of that project alone.

few other tools that will help a lot, stud finder, hot wire checker, drill, hole cutter, wire stripper, proper ceiling cans, a thing many people forget to get is the wire tighteners to protect against cable rubbing on the sharp edge when you run the electrical wire into the can box. get some cable ties and clips...
also check how long of a run between the boxes are so that you know how long of a drill bit to get..

You should be able to do it yourself, but if you can't there is plenty of contractors out there.