recess-itation necessary

If I were less lazy, I would've Photoshopped the overly-large white background out.Sorry the posts haven't been coming along at the usual rapid clip, but the mud 'n' sanding the walls and ceiling is all kinds of slow. If I posted pics, you probably wouldn't notice much difference. It's tedious and dusty there, and fatigue sets in pretty quick when you're working upside down on the ceiling (isn't that a Lionel Richie song?).

In more exciting, "things movin' along" news, Handyman Keith was here today with his ebullient wife, and we plotted out the quantity and rough locations of the recessed ceiling lights. I'm tearing down the awful fluorescent lights in there (which sucked back around 400 watts combined when on- talk about an energy consumption nightmare!). Besides the afore-blogged Sputnik lamp in the dining area, looks I'm doing a total of ten four-inch lights; four in the kitchen area, and six more in the big room. Of course there's enough existing switches and wiring to run Van Halen's light rig on the Fair Warning '81 tour, so we're covered there.

Today I'm researching the mundanities of recessed lamp housings. Apparently they make what's called "IC rated", which means "if you have ceiling full of old insulation that's just dying to burst into flames, you need this kind", which won't heat up and do just that. Of course they cost more. The upside is that they make them specifcally for CFL bulbs (which don't get nearly as hot), thus, less heat = smaller/slightly cheaper. But they're still looking to be around $200 for six, and I need ten, and that doesn't exclude the external trim hardware… it's never easy and if it is, it's probably not cheap.

And about that external trim hardware:

It's a lot of "any color you look as long as it's white". Of course I want silver, so that's a little less common, but still available. Looks like I'm gonna be taking a trip to ye olde Home Depot today. I shall report back!