Jakes DIY Project

Our house has been in shambles this past week while we, I really mean Jake, does his real first DIY project. Our living room has no overhead lighting and that bothers me that its so dark at night or on days like this where its gloomy. It was one of the top things we were looking for in our house and this one had it in most rooms which was 30 times better than most of the houses we looked at. I couldnt believe the number of people who live in a lamp lit home 24/7. Dont get me wrong I like the way lamps have that sutle glow, but come on give me some light!

We started off with 2 estimates for the overhead lighting in the living room, a rough in in the office (the other room without lighting) and a ceiling fan in our screened in porch. The quotes....$2800 and $1200. Whoa! How they could be so different for the same thing-I'm not sure, but that didnt include the patch work for the ceiling since we have a two story house and no access to over the living room. We estimated the patch work to be at least $500, but we are horrible estimates because we had no clue the lights would have cost that much-our estimate was no more than $600. Of course, we're cheap!

So, based on the fact that the estimates were so high we decided to only do the living room right now and get the other 2 smaller projects finished later. Also based on estimates we knew we didnt want tons of holes in the ceiling to run wire and then have to patch it. Jake is briliant and comes up with the idea to have is co-worker, who is a floor guy that works at Lowes (hes probably killing himself that I wrote "floor guy"-I dont know his title though) pull up the carpet, padding and flooring upstairs in our 2 spare rooms which are right above the living room so they could have direct access. This meant cheaper and no holes! Well, that is if the flooring wasnt coming up...so Jake told me...minor problem (of course you know what I was thinking at that point). Here is what the spare rooms look like still:

And all those holes would have been on the ceiling needing patched up if we had not done this, but this is scarey! I'm still wondering how it is going to look 'just like it did before' as Jake has told me. At this point I think he is going to do the job well, but in the mean time our house has looked like this:

The once roomy loft with the carpet and furnishings from the spare rooms!

The living room, empty to avoid getting everything dusty when holes were drilled.

The kitchen, holding everything the living room had in it!

Preparation for the lights to go in. We decided on recessed lighting since it would make the entire area bright and we dont really have enough overhead space for ceiling fans.

Today, our living room is back together with all lights installed and a minor problem that should be fixed when Jake gets home today-one of the 3 way switches isnt working right. The spare rooms and loft remain as in the pictures above and should be back to normal on Sunday (I hope).

The project wasnt cheap for materials: $160 for trim and CFL lights, $250 for wiring, can inserts, extra tools we didnt have, and probably $50 I dont really know where it went, but it was a lot cheaper than the estimates given and it gives a little self confidence to my hub for doing something he isnt trained to do! I say a successful project! I'll post pictures when everything is 100% finished! So far it looks great and as Jake says "lights up like a Christmas tree".