garage lighting [part two].

So after wiring the garage sale florescent lights a few weeks ago, I wired the outside garage sale lights today. It all started three years ago, during our annual island garage sale extravaganza, where we hop on bikes, attach panniers and a bike trailer (coincidentally, found at a garage sale), and whiz past all the suckers in cars to see what we can score at the hundreds of houses having sales. It's usually pretty random...

Here, K bikes (and carries her messenger bag) with J up ahead... the lights I ended up installing today can be seen in the trailer, along with a pair of skis (J only used once), a porch blanket, and various other things (according to the photos, we also ended up finding an 18" square marble baking slab for K, some recessed light cans for me, and various other useful things).

Being garage sale lights (I think they were a buck or two a piece), they required some touching up with spray paint in order to match the (uhh, much pricier) Rejuvenation lights for the front porch and back door that I bought years ago.

The before -

And then after (with a coat of white paint inside, and flat black on the outside - Rejuvenation's 'oil-rubbed bronze' looks more black than anything - and I had all the spray paint in various leftover quantities in the garage so it only took half an hour or so) -

The wiring part was actually pretty easy. I pulled some existing wires to tidy up, but basically all I had to do was redo the splice (and stuff the mess in a real box with a cover on it) after running cable to where each of the three lights would be installed -

(I put the cover on after I finished the splice)

Then cut three holes in the garage -

(I have a handy template for circular fixture boxes)

(photo by K)

Then pull the wires through and splice them -

(photo by K)

Then just connect the three fixtures -

Turn the circuit back on, cross fingers, and... flip the switch by the back door...

Success! And for fun the back door light for comparison -

Yeah, it's nicer and more 'Arts & Craftsy' but... cost about three hundred times more, so these will do nicely for the garage. Afterall, it's nice just having light out there with the flick of a switch by the back door.

Actually, they're almost too bright, so I may replace them with 40W white bulbs (I got 65W clear ones). But anyway, light...