Let there be (recessed) light.

There was a lot of crawling around in a dark, smelly attic over the weekend, but we went from this:

To this:

Recessed lights in the hallway! Whee! And not a moment too soon. I was getting pretty tired of literally running through the dark hall to get to the bathroom at night. The hallway is pitch black, and there are spiders everywhere. Or at least that’s what I tell myself once I get to the end of the hallway and click on the bathroom light. I’m not a scaredy cat — I’m just being cautious.

Here’s how the project went from down below. Bradley’s used a template to trace a circle on the ceiling. And then he cut it out using a jig saw:

He’s such a pro with the jigsaw. Check out his nearly perfect circle:

Once the hole was cut, Bradley crawled through the attic and installed the lights:

He also did all the electrical work to get those suckers in working order, but I didn’t take pictures of that because he was working by flashlight. Electrical work is definitely a Bradley job. I mostly just held up the flashlight for him and fetched him tools when he needed them. And constantly reminded him to be careful. And asked bajillion times whether he had shut off the power to the entire house, just in case. Cautious to the max.

Besides having to work in a smelly, dark environment, we also had the annoyance of having zero plug-ins. We had to drag up a long extension cord to plug power tools into. Bradley put up with it as long as he could (approximately 6 hours total) and then decided to install and wire a light and a plug-in in the middle of the attic:

There were a lot of “LET THERE BE RECESSED LIGHT!” and “LET THERE BE LIGHTBULB!” jokes going on. Mostly from me. Bradley was busy wiring-slash-ignoring my corny self.

On the left you can see boxes full of all our worldly possessions. Down the center you can see some storm shutters we found in the attic and might eventually clean up and hang. And up top you can see the rafters that the bats hang out in and poop from:

I long for the days we didn’t have light in our attic and I was none the wiser. Ignorance is bliss. I’ll never climb up there in flip-flops again. *Shudder*

As for as boozhey goes — that’s the fancy, French word for budget — these lights rang up to be $19 a pop. We paid just over $12 each for the cans and $7 each for a plastic piece that went inside. We also picked up a 6-pack of energy saver bulbs for about $18.

A couple of weeks after we got these, we found the recessed light cages on a clearance rack at Lowe’s for $1 each. They weren’t the type that can be installed in an attic full of insulation so they won’t work upstairs, but we could definitely install them in the drop-ceiling we plan on doing in the kitchen. We snagged all 5 that were on the shelf for a mere six bones. They were originally over $10 each, so we scored them for 90% off.

We ended up buying 11 total recessed lights — the 2 we put up in the hallway and the rest for other spots. We don’t want to sound like we’re going recessed-light-crazy here, buying em up in bulk and slapping them up all over the house. We’re placing them strategically in areas where a hanging light fixture just won’t work.

The office has a super low ceiling (under 8 feet) so having recessed lights is a nice way to have lighting without constantly bumping our heads on some fixture. And the spot right outside the bathroom also has a low ceiling.

You can see those wires dangling all the way down the hall, so even hanging a really small fixture will be visible. It kinda of ruins the whole huge-brick-wall-at-the-end-of-the-hallway thing we’re going for.

In other news:

• Our plasterer called us this morning and she’s showing up tomorrow morning to get things started. Whee!! I may or may not have squeaked out a single tear at the thought of fiiiiinally getting these rooms done-zo.
• The Ariondack chairs are stained! They need a second coat of varnish and then I’ll share all the deets with you guys. Stay tuned for that!
• We realized a few days ago that we’ve lived without a stove / oven for over 3 months! Because all of our moolah is going into our house projects right now, we’ve put the kibosh on eating out. Instead, we’ve been relying on our grill, rice cooker and microwave for all of our cooking. How crazy is that?
• We’ve also been without a dishwasher for over 3 months. I may or may not have squeaked out a single tear at the thought of that, too.

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