Found out there was no insulation above my lights, so it felt like there was AC pumping through them when it started getting cold. I’m working on remodeling the room anyway, but didn’t want to get up in the attic to redo all of the insulation so cut out some blanks that would fit the holes and found it helped a lot with the heating bills and the ongoing breeze.
Light Cutout’s:
Had to laugh at that. My family makes sport of the fact that I align all of the screw slots horizontally in the switch & outlet covers. Glad I’m not alone.
For some reason I don’t find the decor covers which are 2 layers with hidden screws floating my boat. Not sure why. Although I have a couple around the house so I could have LED nightlights embedded in them or the switches instead of something plugged into an outlet.
I attached a lot of brazing work to a house I later sold and was contacted later about where I bought the stuff. Poor guy was very disappointed when I told him I made it all. (Caution: Brazing is as large a rabbit hole as lasers).
So, in 10-20 years you upgrade to a new house.
Let us have a moment of silence for the frustration of the new owner who is scouring the countryside when some of those fixes need replacing.
All looks well done, like it was suppose to be there. Keep up the good work.
Do be careful about the cutout covers for recessed lights, though. If the light bulbs get hot, I’m not sure how heat tolerant acrylic is… and more importantly, the insulating properties that keep your room from getting cold might also keep the hot fixture from getting properly ventilated.
The switch covers are just plain draft board (2 layers thick and 2 different patterns one for the switch shape and one to stand off from the wall) painted with flat black spray paint and I made sure the tolerance was close enough to pressure fit well, but I also used some weak magnets to hold onto the switch mounts.
I’m using LED bulbs so they don’t even get warm anyway, but as someone else mentioned, no insulation above, lots of holes in the cans themselves, and heat rises so no issues there, plenty of ability for the heat to not build up and not effect the shape of the acrylic.
I did a google search for “Modern House Numbers” and found some that would let me “preview” what they would look like, did a quick trace and scaled them up to the size I was looking for and cut them out on Plywood, painted, and gave them some weather proofing coatings. Mounting on brick, I made some little tabs that would fit between the bricks and used construction adhesive to adhere them to the house. Used the number cutout’s from the board as a template to make sure everything remained straight.
If you look close… All of the screws are vertical (nothing worse than flipping up or down a switch when it’s dark and getting your nail caught in the screw head… oh and it looks better… lol
As an electrician myself I’m am ridiculously meticulous about making all of my screws go up and down like that. It just looks nicer. But I’m loving the magnetic no screw idea!
I second this unless you are using LED bulbs, you need to get your butt up into the attic and make sure the insulation is piled over the cans. Standard 65 watt bulbs if that is what you have are going to give you a major problem.
I doubt you want to have Burning down the house by the talking heads as your new theme song.
I added recessed lighting to our previous houses MBR. and just working around them when they were on made me realize they are super hot. we have all LED’s at the new house.
I never would have thought of the orientation of the screws to be an issue. Guess I will have to check mine now. Learn something new from the forum every day.
Glad I’m not alone.
