Save Money On Electrical Work, step by step
Ok, so we lately had some work done. Nope, not calf implants, but you are close…
How about can implants? Also known as recessed lighting. And we went for a pendant injection while we were at it (when in Rome…). In fact the wide shot shows more of the chaos that ensued simply to get the room ready for its close up (we took out half of Karl The Sectional and pushed him across the room along with rolling back the rug and covering the floor with drop clothes under each work area).
Can you believe we are well into year three of living here and we have never had overhead lights in the living room (except for one small light that used to hang off-center in the corner). And while we enjoy lamps for ambiance, overhead lights can be helpful to flip on when more illumination is necessary (like for finding that rogue doll shoe that Clara needs rightthissecond!). In short there is a reason that Candice Olson champions the whole light-layering thing (some recessed lights + a pendant + a few table lamps or floor lamps seems to be her sweet spot, sometimes with a sconce or two tossed in there for good measure).
And since we used to have two large fans overhead – without lights mind you, simply big hulking brown fans that we never used (this part of the house is cooler and has plenty of sliders to open for a breeze) – we had two fixture boxes in the ceiling to tap into for the recessed lights.
And magically, with the scroll of a mouse they are done. And they are glorious.
We thought about branching off from them and adding a ton more (four? six? eight?) but chose that since there were simply those two fixture boxes that existed, we’d live with two for now before swiss-cheesing the ceiling and buying more materials. But knowing that we can consistently add more now that these babies are wired up is pleasant.
When it came to making sure those recessed light conversions were done safely, we hired our go-to local electrician (his name is Sean, and he runs S.J. Ryan Electric, who we mentioned during our kitchen reno here).
The cords up in the attic above the living room were a little too scary (not up to code at all) for us to deal with on our own, and the peace of mind of relying on an expert for things that can burn your house down is consistently pleasant. But like most DIYers, we were excited to tackle whatever was within our skill set (because we are low-cost like that). Which meant that we were glad to instal the pendant light over the table by the window, simply as soon as Sean’s folks got the fixture box centered (it used to be about a foot too far to the left so the old pendant made the window look truly wonky).
Sometimes we can move fixture boxes ourselves, like we did in our bathroom here…
… but in this case there was not any slack in the wire for us to move it ourselves, and there were plenty of other wires going to the box that confused us, so we had them get things up to code and move them over while they were at it.
It is a lot like how we hired a contractor to assist us open up the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and then did all the drywall/trim/finishing ourselves to save some loot. In this case we grabbed the ol’ baton and did the pendant installation and patched the ceiling hole. Since most electricians charge hourly, the more you do yourself, the more you can save.
Oh and you can also save money by prepping the room before anyone shows up. For this little adventure we:
- moved the sofa
- rolled back the rug
- put down drop cloths
- marked the ceiling for where we hoped things to go
That last bullet is a biggie. Measuring to be sure the pendant would be centered and then marking an x on the ceiling saved us time since we did not have to debate the pendant placement while the electrician was here (any long chats while the electrician’s around = cash-money out the door, since they are on his time).
And after they left, we:
- hung the pendant light
- patched that hole in the ceiling near the back window
- caught our breath
- put the room back together
And then it looked like this…
Of course the giant window makes our fairly pendant a lot more invisible than he is in person (he’s crisp and straightforward to see in real life), but going from zero overhead lights to two recessed lights and a pendant over the table is such an excellent change. There is a reason all those people say “good lighting is a room changer.”
When it comes to the whole hole patching shebang, we have a few pointers for you…
Hole patching pointer numero uno: We use these little hole-patching mesh things from Home Depot along with Crackshot Spackle by Dap (applied with a spackle knife) for a pleasant swift cover-up.
Hole patching pointer numero dos: Do not stop at one spackle session, I consistently try to do 2-3 thin applications so I catch all the little imperfections that I might miss the first time (you can sand between each spackling sesh or simply keep building it up and then sand when you are sure you have all the low points filled). Note: you can see most of this process on video here if that helps.
Hole patching pointer numero tres: I heard that Magic Erasers were fairly handy if you did not want to stir up as much dust as sanding would, so after my spackle dried I gave it a try. And I gotta say, it rocked. Some gentle buffing back and forth against the dry spackle with my only-slightly-wet Magic Eraser filed down the high points and made a lot less of a mess, but I think the key to my success may have been that I do not mound my spackle (I simply try to keep it flush while covering the low points, so minimal sanding is necessary).
Hole patching pointer numero quatro: When it is time to paint over your smoothed out spackle, be sure it is fully smooth (drywall or spackle imperfections are not covered by paint, they are emphasized by it). You also want to feather the paint out about 12″ beyond the spackled area, simply so it is not an obvious blob of paint on the ceiling (two thin and even coats with long feathery brush strokes works for me).
As for the pendant that we chose, you might remember it from our little lighting collection (we mentioned that we purchased three things in that old post- two of which we still had to hang). It was excellent to at last get it this baby up – especially since it is now perfectly centered over the table and in front of the window.
I enjoy that the wire and canopy are a crisp white color. I nearly looks like it is floating like a big ol’ sun in the sky.
And as for the third thing that we picked up from our collection, that colorful shade found a home on our little stationery desk. Which is also known as Burger’s treat desk since those are its two functions.
It adds more of the colors that you see in the green and blue lanterns on the desk, and the shapes in the shade seem to tie into the shapes in the mirror and the cutouts on the lanterns. It is a pleasant counterpart to the neutral choices around it, like the walls, the desk, the chair, the ottoman, and the curtains.
We hosted a little lamp shade fashion show with him. We tried it out on a few other lights, including the floor lamp in the sunroom (which was also cute) but chose to enjoy him in the living room for now. Who knows where he’ll end up though…
Close up in 3… 2… 1. Boom.
As for the cost, this lighting upgrade was $72 in materials (for the two can lights, the trim for those, some wiring and junction boxes to fix a few bad connections in the attic, etc) and around $200 for all of the labor. We typically tell people it is about $100 to get an overhead light brought in, so we thought that converting two of them to recessed lights and moving a fixture box so it is centered (while straightening out some tangled fire-hazard wiring up in the attic) for $200 was a strong price. Heck, when we look back at this before picture from 2010…
… it is remarkable how far this room has come.
The only sad thing is that we sat on the sofa this weekend and said “why did we wait so many years to do this?!” Is not that consistently how it goes? Oh well, at least now we can enjoy it. And say pun-tastic things like “I see the light!” every time we walk into the room. Heck yeah that happens.
What are you folks up to with lighting/ceilings/holes/pendants? Do you take the hire-out-some-but-do-what-I-can approach? I think we saved around 100 bucks patching that hole and hanging the pendant ourselves. Sing it with me: “everyday I am shuffling spackling…”
