Our house now has more light in two rooms that desperately needed it: the kitchen and the bathroom. In the meantime, we solved what we thought would be an expensive electrical witch-hunt1 in the midst of flipping every breaker and discovered we also have a fair bit of room left on the panel for renovations-to-come!
For the bathroom, the problem was the area over the toilet — a dark little nook that doesn’t get any light from the ceiling fixture. We picked up a set of LED strip lights from Costco — $29 for the set, complete with a remote control to swap to every colour imaginable or fade or flash from one to the next. Mike installed them earlier in the week only to discover that the infrared sensor was shot. We exchanged them on Saturday and the new ones make a huge difference. The big bonus? we can set them to red at night and still see where we are going without having a big effect on our night vision.
The photo here doesn’t give the best view, but trust me: they are bright and very welcome. Last night, Kiddo put them on fade (where they go from one colour to the next) during her shower.
For a long while, we have wanted to replace the crappy light in the kitchen. The fan was near useless but worse was the light — maximum 60 watts from a single bulb meant lots of shadows and not nearly enough light. Add to that the fact that it buzzed and hissed if the light had been off for any length of time… well, we threatened it for a while before we finally picked up some track lighting.
We were halfway through installing it when we realized we hadn’t bought bulbs! We went to London Drugs and ended up getting LED floodlights (instead of either incandescent or compact fluorescent). They were pricey — on sale for $19.99 per bulb — but the package says they should last about 22 years. I’m not sure that light fixture will still be in place in 22 years!
The difference is amazing. The four lights are each equivalent to a 50 watt incandescent (but draw only 7 watts each) so it effectively tripled the light in the room, and we were able to focus it where it was needed (though we will likely have to slightly adjust the lights as we figure out where there are too many shadows).
But the best part? Mike and I did this project together… and we don’t always work well together on DIY… but this was straightforward and we did it without any bloodshed. So, YAY, US!
1About 3 years ago two of our outlets went =poof= and stopped working. We went through every breaker then and couldn’t get them to work… After speaking to a friend who is an electrician (who had helped us with some electrical work when we moved in) he suggested it was a junction box, hidden in a wall somewhere, and would take some sleuthing to find. (As is typical in homes of such a vintage, renos prior to our purchase were sometimes made without care to code.) So… we made do… because we didn’t relish ripping apart walls and ceilings to find the mystery junction. Instead it looks like one breaker just didn’t get fully flipped. FOR THREE YEARS. AUuuuughhh!