Day Nine-seventy-two: more illumination

Continuing our efforts to brighten up the joint, we finally tackled a project that's bugged us forever--insufficient lighting in the basement. Maybe you're thinking, "Who cares? It's a basement." But that's precisely the point. Because it has so few windows and yet we go down there regularly, it needs a good deal of artificial light. We've been getting by with a couple overhead lights and multiple floor lamps but they get in the way and, let's be honest, give off a college dorm room vibe.

We explored a bunch of options but decided on the simplest one. We'd move two of the existing track lights and extend them beyond the 4 feet that comes standard. Obviously this required a trip to Home Depot. Or rather, Hope Depots. We've never cleaned out a store before, let alone two, but we needed 24 more track lights in addition to the tracks and light bulbs. Here's our stash of lights and bulbs:

And here are two 8-foot pieces of track and a 4-foot piece (in white):

For no particular reason we started on the right side of the basement. We took down the light and found there were two wires into it, presumably because this fixture was in the middle of the circuit.

Then we cut a hole to install the new light box. We made it easy for ourselves by going several feet straight over from the existing box because we thought we'd have to work between the floor joists.

In fact, the guys who installed the ceiling did themselves a favor by putting 2x4s across the bottom of the joists and attaching the drywall to it. This saved the trouble of drilling holes through all the joists for wires that run the length of the basement.

Next we threaded two wires from the existing box to the new one. Taping the wire to an unfolded hanger made the job much easier because the hanger is much stiffer and easier to pass from one hole to the other.

Ok, actually we ran only one wire, connected it to both of the wires in the old box at one end and to the light fixture at the other, flipped the circuit back on, and tried the light and...nothing. Only then did it dawn on us that by combining the wires in the old box we weren't providing a complete circuit. Sigh. So we took everything down again and put in a second wire. That did the trick and we closed the old box, which we're using as a junction between the old wire and our new extension. We'll plaster over that when we repair the holes everywhere.

With this really working we added the now 12 feet of track and attached it to the ceiling with toggle bolts.

Here's what the completed light looks like. Looks a bit like Broadway. One side down, one to go.

Once we had the gist down the steps were easy to repeat. Take down the existing light, open a hole where we wanted to put the new fixture.

Run two wires from the existing box to the new one.

Close up the old light box/junction.

Install the lighting hardware to the new box and wires.

Add the track. Here are the two 8-foot pieces that we saw earlier in the cardboard tubes.

Here's the end result. We kept two floor lamps for the darkest corners but otherwise were able to get rid of 4 or 5. It's a considerable improvement.