Ultra Thin Recessed Lighting | Transform A Dark Living Space

how's it going you guys it's scott with everyday home repairs and today i want to show you how to install these ultra thin led recessed lights in terms of bang for the buck it's hard to beat this upgrade to your home today i'll be working with a living room space that has no ceiling lights it does have a light switch on the wall that controls one outlet that you can plug a lamp into for white we're going to use that light switch to control eight led lights that we're gonna install in the room these lights i got off amazon for about ten dollars per unit and what you get is you get the led driver and then also the light lens and trim piece the cool thing about these one ten dollars is a great value and two selectable running from 2700 kelvin to 5000 you're going to be able to match the light color to your other lights or just the space so for this project i'm going to walk you through start to finish now remember wide open ceiling don't have any holes cut so i need to plan it out where i'm going to put the locations how many lights do i need how to cut the holes how to rewire that switch and then wire all those leds up and then just the overall finished product so let's jump into it and start laying things out so this is the space i'm working with which is a great living room space good light in the daytime from those large windows but nighttime not so much this is the layout which will just be two simple lines of led recessed lights and there's the dimensions so it's 173 inches wide but 228 inches long and those dimensions represent how i actually measured from each wall surface if you want more information on how to lay this out what guidelines to file you can check this link in the upper right hand corner and i'll dive much deeper in how to actually use powerpoint to come up with your led layout design now once you have your dimensions i take small pieces of painter tape drywall square just the 48 inch side of that and then i place small pieces of tape about every two feet or so for those two rows of led recess lights that i'll be putting into the space once you have the pieces of tape down then i take a continuous piece of painters tape and i hover that 48 inch mark it doesn't have to be perfect because once those once the tape is down then i'm going to use my laser measuring tool and then just measure from those surfaces matching up to the dimensions i showed you earlier so each one of those lined up and then i'll mark that for the center point of the holes that i'll need to cut for each of the recessed lights now you want to take your time and this is where you do want to be accurate if you're not putting your lines straight you're going to see that later on then taking a 3 16 inch drill bit i'm going to drill those center points out for all eight of the locations then take a marking flattening and roll that tightly pass it through the hole and then up into the attic space what i want to do is see where each location is and depending on how much insulation i have then once i have all those flags in the attic and start clearing out the insulation so it's not falling while i'm drilling out all of my holes remember wear respirate a respirator when you're up in your attic because there'll be a lot of particles floating around while you're clearing this out now you're ready to start drilling or cutting those holes for each of the recessed lights like the ones you see behind me what did i use so i used this purpose-built recessed light hole saw it's made for drywall it's not a traditional hole saw which you can also use in wood it has carbide teeth that are spaced out which is really good at eating away at drywall but one thing to consider is if you do have a ceiling joist running through the middle of your hole this is something you do not have to consider for your layout if you're using the ultra thin led recessed lights because they can fit into the hole and secure flush to your ceiling independent on whether or not there's a ceiling joist running through the middle of that hole if you're not careful when you finish the cut in the hole that has the ceiling joist going through these teeth will grab and then that's going to bind your drill and possibly damage your ceiling so just be careful if you do have a ceiling joist running through the hole just take your time at the end of that cut also it's good to just know what you're getting into so this is my ceiling if you just have half inch drywall that's awesome it's gonna be pretty easy to cut out but this is actually a ceiling with some plaster so i have a half inch drywall and a quarter inches of plaster now if you look closely at this at this hole two out of my eight holes actually had the steel mesh running underneath a ceiling joist so i had to do quite a bit more work to get those holes out because the hole saw was just not going to eat through that wire mesh without making a huge mess and damaging the ceiling quite a bit so if you guys want to dive deeper and just spend more time if you're not super comfortable with cutting these holes i have a whole nother video right here that you can dive into it's going to show you when things go right it's going to show you that wire mesh and how did i get those holes out with an oscillating tool and what kind of blade i use and also it shows you for about three bucks how to make a custom drywall dust and debris catch which is going to help just keep your space cleaner and not make a mess of your room with drywall all over the place so now let's jump into the electrical portion of this project which will start to really pull everything together so let me walk you through now how i'm going to reconfigure the electrical to fit the led recessed lights that we're installing and i will know i apologize for the audio i know there's quite an echo but hopefully the content is still valuable for your project so the way it's set up in this room and this receptacle providing power goes up into the attic and then down to just two different switches one switch goes to the porch light and then one switch controls a receptacle that's right below the electrical box how i'm going to reconfigure it is i'll be taking the power coming in the romex coming in and i'll be installing a simple junction box up in the attic i'll be coming in with the existing power and then jumping out to 14 3 row max which is gonna give me the additional wire needed for the lights okay so 14-3 is going to come down here it's going to combine the black wire which is going to be powering the porch light powering the receptacle now all the time so it's no longer switched and then also provide the power we need for the switch to go up to our lights then the red wire is that switchable power that will go to the led lights and turn them on pretty simple then between each of the lights is just a 14-2 no need for the extra wire right because we're just daisy chaining those together so that's the setup now i'm going to try to pull the new 14 3 from this box up into the item that's basically the trickiest part of this is getting that new 14 3 up into the attic now if you're a pro you've done this many times one let me know your feedback what tricks do you use what am i doing wrong but if you're a diy or you don't do this very often this can be a little tricky especially if the wire is attached to the studs here so it makes it so you can't pull hopefully that's not the case because i really don't want to have to tear in this drywall and it would only do that as the last result i'll remove these old switches so i can access the old wiring that i'm going to need to pull the new 14 3 up in the attic then i'll strip the 14 through all four wires in a staggered approach connecting up the longest strand to the old existing neutral wire then i'll twist the bundle as tight as possible making sure no wires are sticking out and it's as smooth as you can get it then once you have that i'll take electrical tape and then i'll wrap the exposed copper again you want to make sure that just nothing sticking out that can catch which will help you as you pull the new wire in the attic once you have that fun part jump up in the attic hopefully you have a little more headroom than i do because this is an outside wall and then start working it pulling the new 14-3 up into the space if you can get that that's a big step in the overall process and there it is now unfortunately i have a little drywall repair in my future because i did have to cut a hole to get that 14-3 up and into the attic there's the 14 2 which will go to my first led light but first i need to put together the junction box so this is up in attic and that's the main power it's the old wire that was going down to the electrical box with the switch for the porch and the receptacle before so that's cut short in the attic and it's going into this junction box with on the other side is the 14 3 romax that we just ran down to the electric box and here's the 14 2 that will go to the led lights starting with the first hole so i tighten down all those cable connectors and just a tip guys i'm trying to include all the parts this project depending on your experience level you might want to go slower or faster so the little gear icon in the lower right hand corner you can slow down the video or you can speed up the video to match your experience level so i'll just strip off all these wires and then i'll be connecting up the grounds together and then all the neutrals together and then i'll be taking the black hot side and going to the black hot in the 14 3 and then the red from the 14 3 goes to the black and the 14 tubes that's switched power and that's going to turn on led lights back down at the electrical box with the two switches i have the 14 3 coming in which i'll strip all those wires to and then i need to connect just connect up all the grounds together and there i'm going to twist these together and then actually ground it because this box was grounded i ground it to a screw that is the on the lower right hand corner tightening clamp then i'll bring together all the neutrals and then the blacks which will power the outlet or receptacle all the time and then two pigtails coming out for the two switches so the switch i'm doing right now will actually be for the led recessed lights and that's why the red goes in the top of that and then the other black goes to the porch light that's basically just replacing the old switch the way it was i'll tighten these down now long term i do want to put a dimmer switch on but just going to put these cheap switches in place to test everything out and now it's time to push through all eight of those led lights all right so i got a couple of these wired up and i just want to touch on the wiring of each of these driver units so overall very simple they'll have inside of ground hot and neutral and they have actually push pin instead of wire nuts they'll actually just be push pins i don't like push pins usually on switches and receptacles but at least with these you can uh they're transparent so you can see through and make sure that your copper is making good connection and that you have a solid connection between all the wires now i'm daisy chaining most of these except for my last one over there so i will need two different cable connectors these are 3 8 of an inch and those do not come with the kit so down in the description you'll see links to the led lights you'll see links to these 3 8 7 inch cable connectors anything else you need for this job but what you do i'll show you all you have to do is just put a flathead screwdriver in there twist and the the cover pops right out so for all of these except for the last one i need to do two of those then you just take the nut off pop it in and then you just put that on the inside make sure you can see it and then just tighten that up what this is going to do is it tightens down on the road max and provides strain relief so you're not like pulling at the wires if somebody pulls on the real mix itself so you twist that up you get it to where it starts to snug in and you can either tap on the inside on the notches on that nut with a flat head screwdriver or what i do is i just hold that inside and then i just leverage like that on the outside and that's how i tighten it up and i want my screws to be heads to be facing the same direction so they're just easy to tighten up so romex goes in that one has one line coming in i'm going to put another line out the nice thing is i'm able to do all this wiring down in the space and not have to live up in the attic for an hour or more getting all these wired up so i can kind of fish my romex up through a hole to the other one connect that up and then actually put the led light in its place secure it and then go into the next one and then just keep daisy chain along that way other thing to note make sure you have like i said make sure you have your correct setting before you put it up in the ceiling so i am setting to 3000 so i want to make sure all those are set to 3 000 when i'm putting them in the ceiling now i have two connected up i don't want to get too far without testing the circuit so i have my switches in place which you saw i have flipped the powder on and it looks like we are good to go now test everything else out in your search as well so make sure for me i have a porch light make sure the porch light is coming on make sure your receptacles are powered anything else in that circuit make sure that it is the way you plan it to be but other than that you should be good and i'm going to do the other six lights now [Music] huge difference to this space i mean this is a living room it's the main entrance the first thing you see and we are renovating and reselling this house so in terms of first impressions this is a big deal it really lights up the space and now throwing a dimmer switch you'll be able to adjust that to bring lights down or we have all the light that you'd ever want you can look in the description to see the exact led lights we used and the cable connectors the other parts of tools that we used for your reference if you're going to do a project similar to this also let me know what you think and let me know if you have any questions especially on the electrical side all of our scenarios are going to be different also you might not have attic access that's going to make this a whole different project but investment wise this is only about 200 in cost so it you will get the return if you're doing it yourself from a diy perspective i think it's a no-brainer before you take off don't forget if you haven't subscribed to the channel already do that as we have multiple videos coming out per week to help you with your repairs and improvements around the house and we'll catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 106,164

Rating: 4.9023862 out of 5

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Id: KgChTKOaNsA

Length: 17min 10sec (1030 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021