The Kitchen Reveal: Lighting Up the Joint

In case you missed Part I and Part II of our kitchen renovation saga be sure check them out before we dive into the installation of our snap in recessed lights.

As it stands, the only light source in this entire 160sf kitchen is this single boob light. In all of it's glory.

We knew that with the full kitchen renovation around the corner we wanted to go ahead and update all of the lighting in the kitchen (and bring it to the 21st century) with recessed can lights. Because without good lighting, how were we supposed to start demo? ha

We picked up six of these EnviroLite Easy Up 6" LED recessed lights. They are really cool because they just snap into place with springs and don't require traditional can lighting housing, which makes them 100x easier to install. Plus at about $25 a pop they aren't shabby.

We measured out the distance from the wall all the way across the room. We wanted the cans to be 24" from the wall so that it would illuminate the workspace. A lot of people make the mistake of lining up recessed lighting with the walkways in the kitchen which causes you to be in your own shadow while working. 24" allowed the cans to be in front of the upper cabinets but still over the counters below.

After dividing the length of the room into thirds, we marked where each can would be with painters tape. This allowed us to make any neccessary adjustments before it was too late and there were holes all over the ceiling.

On the sink side of the kitchen we subtracted the depth of the upper cabinets so that the tape is still technically 24" from the wall (that's why it looks a lot closer than the other side).

After each marker was exactly where we wanted it, Derek drilled holes along the centerline of each light location. Then he placed a dowel through the ceiling into the attic so he would know exactly where each can light hole would need to be cut.

I had the very important job of taping plastic bags around each dowel to catch all of the debris that would be cut out, to avoid more cleanup than neccessary.

Derek used a Rotozip to cut each hole perfectly. See? This would have been a lot to clean up x6.

Then Derek used a parallel circuit for all of the new wires up in the attic, and pulled them through the holes to connect to each recessed light.

After all of the recessed fixtures were in place then all that was left was to snap on the magnetic trim piece that came with each light. It hides any imperfections you may have had when cutting your holes for a nice clean look.