Question about recessed lighting

[merci_me]

My living room is like a cave. It also sits in the center of the house, thus, no windows. It does have two sets of French doors to an ultra light family room, so it's getting "some" bit of light. We refer to it as LaCaave. It's 30 ft long and 16 wide and of course, all the electrical outlets are on walls, so no lighting at all in the center.

Also, it isn't "off the beaten path". It is THE path. You have to go through it to get to anywhere else, so we walk through it dozens of times a day. Actually, walk through it is about all we do in there.

I watch Candace Olsen on HGTV's Devine Design. Chico is always gingerly popping pot-lights in all over the place. Has anyone done this? I know I'd need an electrician, but how reasonable is it to get the lights in?

Oh yeah, the ceiling is vaulted, no attic above it. So how would that get wired? Would the whole ceiling have to be torn out and wiring run? That would be way more expensive than I want to deal with. But then, Chico is always just there on a ladder installing from within the room. I've never heard any mention of him having to work from the attic.

Right now, I have this sort of idea in my head, that maybe adding some beams, shooting out toward the center of the room and forming maybe like a hexagon in the center, so maybe wiring could come from the walls and be concealed along the beams and then drop a nice chandelier in the center. But again, with the vaulted ceiling, I'm not sure a chandelier would look right. I forgot to mention, the "vault" isn't pretty. Picture a tent, now cut that in half, so that on one side of the room, it's a normal 8 ft ceiling and on the opposite side of the room, it's vaulted to 12 ft.

I've lived with this for 20 years and I'm use to it. Generally, we only even use the room for parties and it's night time and really, the lighting is fine at night. It's the daytime (when the room is mostly unused) that it's LaCaave. However, I imagine in the next, maybe 10 years, we'll be looking at downsizing. When I see the shows like "Househunters", people are always talking about how the rooms are so bright and airy. That always makes me cringe, cause our living room ain't!!

Any experiences or suggestions?

Mary

[Longhorn]

1. What about a skylight or a sun tunnel?

I have a similar situation only wiring isn't the problem and the room is our family room, so it's used more than any other room. I run cords under chairs etc. so I have lights everywhere but I'd rather have natural light.

[merci_me]

2. I'm going to attempt to post a pix

I've tried to post images here before and in the words of Dick Gephardt, I was a miserable failure.

If this one works, it's a pix of my LR last Christmas. From where I was standing to take the pix, there is about 7 more feet of room behind me. It's the "pathway".

We have five skylights around the house, but somehow, the way this room is decorated, more formal, I just don't think a skylight would do it. Besides, that still doesn't help at night, though night isn't too bad. The other thing, with the torrential rain we get in Houston, the sound on the skylights, scares the beejeebus out of the dogs and the living room is where they go to hide and ride out the rain and hail.

Here goes........

Nevermind, tried several ways and can't get it to work. If you want to see if you can see it, add http:// (no www)to the URL below and maybe you can go to it. When the image didn't show, it said I had an illegal something or other. Even with the full link, using the http:// it says it's an illegal string. Who knows?

photobucket.com/albums/v230/Midge_727/?action=view¤t=HPIM0609.jpg

[Longhorn]

3. After you upload a photo to photobucket

some codes will appear beneath the photo. Just copy and paste the url code into your DU post and the picture will show up.

A sun tunnel looks like a light on the inside of the house.

http://www.veluxusa.com/products/sunTunnels/

I don't know what would happen as far as noise goes. We have a metal roof so we already hear every rain drop!

[merci_me]

6. I'll try this one more time

OMG!! It works!!

As to the sky tunnel thing, we have one of those too, and unlike the 5 skylights, it doesn't carry the sound of the rain. It's in our masterbath, which fortunately, isn't often seen by others. For some reason, don't know if it's normal, but every couple of months we have to uncap it and clean out little dead bugs, kind of like you get in a porch light.

Our living room is big, so we'd need more than a couple of those skylights and then bringing a tall ladder in to get the things cleaned out would be not so much fun. If I can't nag my husband to get the bathroom skylight cleaned, I can teeter on the ladder and do it, but I don't see me doing the living room and everyone who comes into the house ends up at least walking through there to get to the family room or kitchen.

LOL, just realized with any kind of skylights in there, I'd have to dust!!!

Mary

[politicat]

4. What about track lighting?

We, too, have vaulted ceilings. We installed track lighting (the baby firefly lights) though our LR is more modern rather than traditional.

We ended up having to replace 1 piece of drywall. We cut a eighth-sheet sized (longitudinal) piece of drywall out of the wall, by the stud where the electrical box was. We then added a spur off of the electrical wiring to the ceiling, where we had to cut another eighth sheet hole, pulled the wiring and put in a new box. We did the same thing in 2 other locations for a total of 3 boxes in the ceiling. We also wired those boxes to switches that we mounted on the walls. If you have a ceiling - not exposed joists and roof beams - then there's room to mount an electrical box and a low-profile can or track up there. There should be 6-8 inches if not more of insulating space up there.

It's pretty easy to do, but it is necessary to have a breaker you can turn off - or better, and my way, to turn off all power to the house. However, my father had his electrician's license, as did both of my uncles and my grandfather, and my DH also has an electrical engineering background. I'm pretty confident with electrics. If you're not, you might consider taking a class in residence wiring or electric wiring 101 at your community college.

This is basically what the electrician will do for you, so you also have an idea of what to expect.

Good luck!

[merci_me]

7. As you can see from the pix

I really don't picture it with track lighting.

Any electrical installation will be done by an electrician, but I'm wondering if it's even something that is affordable and that won't be a HUGE chore.

Mary

[Jersey Devil]

5. This doesn't sound difficult

but if you are not familiar with electricity you had better get an electrician to do it.

You could either run a new line up the walls between the studs from the main box or you could run a line from one of the electrical outlets up the wall (cutting a small hole above the outlet to fish the wire).

When you get the wire to the top of the wall you would also cut a small hole at the top of the wall and another adjacent to it in the ceiling, drilling a hole big enough for the cable to go through in the corner stud (or just fish the wire from one hole to the other, covering it with a piece of curved metal conduit that you can bury in spackle when you patch the holes). Attach the wire to a junction box nailed into a stud where you want the light (the plastic boxes come with nails built into them), secure both ends and then install the fixture.

If you want a switch all you would have to do is install another junction box in the wall (either between the outlet and the light or somewhere else with a wire from the light).

[merci_me]

8. This is along the lines of what I was wondering.

As you can see in the pix, there are picture lights above the two pictures at the end of the room. My husband drilled into the wall behind the pictures and ran the lines down to the floor. Then using an extention cord, he ran them to an outlet that's behind the tall wall unit on the left. That outlet is triggered by a wall switch and it lights the pictures, and the plants the corners on either side, plus a candle light on top of the wall unit (all low voltage lights).

Anyway, I was wondering about designing some sort of beam system on the ceiling, to hide wires and leading to some kind of a center light. I just don't know about a light hanging right, since the ceiling is at an angle.

I need to check the pix I took at Christmas and see if I have one that shows the beams in the family room. The room dimensions are the same.

Mary

[Jersey Devil]

9. One option after seeing the pic is a hanging ceiling fan/light combo

They make them in various lengths to hang down from the ceiling and they are very easy to install. They come with a metal bar that you slip through a hole you make in the ceiling. The bar is really two bars screwed into each other that you "unscrew" between two beams in the ceiling until the bar is tight and requires no nailing and the hole is covered over by the round ceiling attachment of the fan. I've put 3 of them in my house. I've also seen them installed on sloped or vaulted ceilings like yours and they look good. They also sell accessories for hanging them on vaulted ceilings. This one is by Hunter:

[Jersey Devil]

10. PS - here are detailed instructions for the bar

http://www.mobilehomerepair.com/article14.html