Let There Be Lights

Hope you don't think the title is blasphemous, but I couldn't resist.

Troy has been working steadily and yesterday we had six overhead lights connected to two switches with power. Very exciting.

We've been living with the under cabinet lighting and the lights above the stove and sink. Compared to that, the six overhead lights seem like stage lighting!

I spent a lot of time last weekend looking at the ceiling and drawing big X's where I thought the lights should go. I did some measuring and eye balling and exercised a bunch of "TLAR" (That Looks About Right).

One pendant light was hung in the space/hallway right beside the fridge. If there wasn't a light right there, it was going to be a dark corner.

The other two were centered in the east half of the main room, balanced between the lights above the island and above the table.

Turns out they both came real close to lining up with the end lights in the west half of the room, so I just made them line up.

I came home late on Wednesday but just in time for Troy to offer me the privilege of flipping the switch for the first time. I deferred to him since he had been working so hard on it.

He ran downstairs to flip the breaker on and then ran upstairs and hit the switch. The lights came on...then off. Turns out he had a faulty switch!! It would work only when your finger held it in place. Once you let go, it popped out a little bit and the lights would go off. Grrr. (That's exactly what Troy said. That's all I'm admitting.) He tried switching it out for another switch but when that didn't work, he packed it in for the night.

By Friday he had bought some switches as reinforcements and got it all put back together again. And it worked. Sweet.

I think you can see in the pictures that Troy had to build little "hangers" for all the light boxes since we will be putting in a suspended ceiling. I have no idea how the spacing will work with the panels, and in fact have no idea even what size the panels will be! Troy tells me we will be able to adjust the boxes by up to two inches or so, and I just have to hope that will be enough!