At the very end of my Phase 1 post, I hinted that there might be some issues in my plan for overhauling the extra bedroom closet. The biggest issue was that there was not an overhead light in there....and no outlets to use to hang a pendant or anything. See how dark it is in this picture I posted a few weeks ago:
I mean what's the point of having a walk-in closet if you walk into darkness. DUH! I would love to at some point have an electrician run a light in there if it can be done. There's a room over this one, so it could be a little tricky I'd think. I dunno...I'm obviously not an electrician, but it seems like it could get hairy. My dad suggested another solution. He suggested I look into motion sensor lighting kinda like outdoor flood lights. He sent me a link to these Mr. Beams from Amazon that get really good ratings.
They were only $19.99, motion sensored, and battery operated. Very cool....very very cool BUT for the OUTSIDE of a house. Not the ceiling of my closet. I mean that thing is CREEPY looking. If I opened the closet door and that thing spot lighted me, I woulda wished I had been wearin' a diaper. I mean not that I generally wish to wear diapers...I'm just sayin the alternative to cleaning up the mess I'd make...well lets just say that diapers would be better. So the search continued...for less alien-like lights and ones that could possibly be attached to the ceiling. I looked on Amazon for more Mr. Beam like lights and what do you know! Mr. Beams makes a ceiling light too! Check it out:
Normal looking- check
Ceiling Mounted- check
Battery Operated- check
Motion Sensored- check
So, I ordered two. I was gonna only order one for $19.99, but you get free shipping on amazon (I don't have prime....I'm too cheap) for orders over $25....so I just ordered two. After they arrived, I installed the batteries and then mounted them on the ceiling using these heavy duty command strips:
After seeing the brightness of them and how the light fell, we mounted both. I figured we could always pull one down since we were mounting them with command strips. Oh and as for the reason we didn't mount them using the included screws and such....well I have drilling-hole-commit-o-phobia. It's a real thing ya'll, look it up. Anyhow, mounting these puppies was easy, peasy with the command strips....once I we finagled the full size 8 foot ladder into the closet. Yes, I know I need a 4 foot ladder....I'm hoping this year's Black Friday Lowes or Home Depot will pull through for me and run one cheap. To determine where they went, we looked back at my original plan (see it HERE), took the length of the closet which was 78 inches, divided by 3 (since we we're mounting 2 lights), and got 26 inches. Then took the width of the closet which was 29.5 inches, divided by 2, and got a little less than 15 inches (ok, we eyeballed this one a little more...lol). So following the instructions of mounting things with command strips, we placed the brackets that hold the lights 26 inches from each side of the closet lengthwise (which meant they are also 26 inches from each other) and a little less than 15 inches from each side width-wise. Make sense? Here's a picture with them on where you can see each of the lights beams.
Made it a lot brighter didn't it!? It's not like having an electrically wired one, but it's not bad at all. It's a nice looking cheap solution, actually. One cool thing is since they are motion-sensored, all I have to do is slide the pocket door open and they turn on! No light switch needed. And since they are ceiling mounted, they look normal... here's a shot of them I took while laying down in the closet:
Oh, you noticed the weird little bracket thingy over the doorway? Yeah...I need to take that down....and paint under it. Rawr. That was for the light the previous owners had installed....it was a battery operated pull chain job. It looked atrocious...and was broke when we bought the house.
Now that it's brighter in there, Sophie likes it. I think she thinks it's her room now.
So now we have light....onto the next phase of the plan. Poles! And ya'll know I love poles!
To see previous Extra Bedroom Closet Overhaul posts click the links:
Phase 2- the lights
Note: I was not given anything in this post. I purchased everything myself and was not compensated to post my opinions about it. The links to the products I used are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy something after clicking through my post, I may get a small smidge of Amazon credit....which will only encourage me to keep up the posts. Thanks!
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Who knew they even made lights like that?! Seems like a really good solution when you can run wires. And I'm glad you won't need to wear diapers with these lights.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the point that it doesn't make any sense of keeping walk in closet if there is so much darkness. You could not able to see anything or you have to put some bulb into it.
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