Tag: new home project

Weekend Warrior Recessed Lighting Project, Part Two

Weekend Warrior Series: LED Retrofit Lighting, Part Two

Chris Johnson 4 Comments

During the course of May, our team celebrated National Home Remodeling month by doing some simple lighting projects around the house and sharing them with our readers. We called it our “Weekend Warrior” series because all of the projects can be completed in a weekend (or less!). 

 

Weekend Warrior Retrofit LED Lighting Project

Project Two – The 1-Hour Project

In my last post I shared how we installed recessed lighting in our bonus room. Once I installed the LED retrofits there, I was hooked on the quality and energy-efficiency of the lighting. I decided to change out our seven 75-watt PAR30 halogen recessed lights in our kitchen with seven LED retrofit modules. The 7 halogen recessed lights used 525 total watts of electricity. By switching to LED retrofit modules I would reduce that wattage use to 87.5 watts! HUGE energy savings! In addition to the LED retrofit modules, I also changed out my dimmer switch to a Lutron Maestro C-L dimmer.

This was one project I was able to very easily do myself. In fact, I finished this one in less than an hour. Read More

Weekend Warrior LED Recessed Lighting Project

Weekend Warrior Series: LED Retrofit Lighting, Part One

Chris Johnson 1 Comment

This is the fourth post in our Weekend Warrior blog post series, part of our quest to bring customers unique products and creative ideas for DIY lighting projects around the house. We previously covered how to install security lighting, a custom pantry lighting solution, and creating a kid’s book nook with a wall mounted reading light.

Weekend Warrior LED Recessed Lighting Project

Since moving into my home in 2009 I have completed a number of lighting projects. In fact, I started a New Home Project blog post series documenting them. I am happy to report that a couple of those posts helped others with their own under cabinet and over cabinet lighting projects.

It has been a couple of years, but recently I embarked on two new projects with one overriding theme — Saving money by adding and/or replacing existing lights with LED. The first project that I’d like to share is adding LED recessed lighting to our bonus room to add more general illumination to this room, and the second one switched out our halogen recessed lights to LED. In both projects I installed 6-inch LED retrofits.

Project One – The Weekend Project

My bonus room’s general illumination came only from the lighting on our ceiling fan. For the size of our bonus room this was woefully inadequate. So, jump forward 6 years and we are finally getting around to painting this room and making it more than a “holding area” for random stuff. We decided it was a good time to increase the light level in this room with four LED recessed lights in the 4 corners of the room.

Bonus room with overhead light
Before we installed recessed lighting in our bonus room, our ceiling fan was the only light in the room.

When our house was built in 2009 I used PAR30 halogen light bulbs in our recessed lighting. At the time LED recessed lighting was still a little pricey and there were not many options. Now times have changed. LED recessed lighting, specifically LED retrofits, have come down in price and there a number of options available. Read More

New Home Project: Remodel Recessed Lights

Chris Johnson 1 Comment

Welcome to this fifth blog post of my New Home Project series. This series of posts reviews the lighting projects that I have undertaken in my new home since moving in to it in September 2009. To be honest, most of these projects have been completed some time ago. It was my goal to write a post after each project, but time just gets away from you sometimes. I cannot believe that it has been over 2 years since moving into my home.

This project involved adding seven 4-inch recessed cans throughout the first floor of my house.

New Home Project: Dimmers

Chris Johnson 4 Comments

This is the fourth blog post of my New Home Project post series. This series of posts details the lighting projects that I have undertaken in my new home. I had high hopes for these posts.  One of them was that I would write a post shortly after I actually did the project.  Throw that goal out of the window.  I moved into my new home in September 2009.  I guess better late than never…right?

First, a recap of my other projects:

Now, on to my dimmer project (pics below).
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New Home Project: Under Cabinet Lighting

Chris Johnson 32 Comments

DIY - ELECTRICALRecently, my family and I moved into a new home. We had lived in our previous home for more than seven years (loving every minute in our old house). But we were starting to get just a little cramped as our family had grown from just the two of us to now the four of us.  While packing and moving is no fun at all, I was looking forward to the new house because I had some big plans for our lighting. I mean, hey, I do work for a lighting company.

Over the next couple of blog posts, I am going to share the lighting projects that I have tackled in our new home (including pics). Some projects I did and others I had professional electricians perform. My first new home project was adding under cabinet lights. I had under cabinet lighting installed in our previous home and there was just no way I was not going to have my under cabinet lighting. I literally cannot live without them. We have a favorite saying in our household when we talk about something we want or like.  We say, “It’s a quality of life issue.” Well, under cabinet lighting is a “quality of life issue for me.”
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