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Old 12-03-2006   #4
Enes
 
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Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Blaine
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Re: Electrical Home Work / Recessed Lighting Specific

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.
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