Who puts recessed lighting in a garage?

I do!

My regular readers know that my garage is the testing ground for all my modern home projects.  To me, the primary job of a garage is to hold your car(s), but so often it doubles as a workshop.  This is what happens to me, and about 150 million other Americans, who need a place to store their weed wackers, extra cans of paint, tools and bicycles.

And like the hundreds of thousands of other garage owners, mine has horrible lighting.  No windows, and only a single bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling.  The only real way to see what I’m working on is to open the big garage door.  In the spring and fall that’s OK to do, but Summer is way too hot, and the Winter is too cold (I sound like the Poppa from the 3-bears).  But unlike that big furry guy, I have thumbs and am not afraid of working with electricity.

In the last post I began to tell you how I did the carpentry part of installing recessed lighting.  Locating the lights, checking twice, and cutting the holes.  Today, I want to talk about how I did the electrical wiring.

Back when I was 19, I apprenticed for a while to be an electrician.  Now I’m not licensed, or certified, or any of that stuff, but I do know my way around a wire nut.  Please do not attempt any of this if you are not 100% comfortable with working with electricity.  It can be dangerous, even deadly.  You have been warned.

I got a lot of exercise with this home project, too.  I’ll bet you didn’t know that home repair makes for a great weight loss plan.  Since I was doing this job all by myself, I had to constantly run back and forth between the breaker box, up and down a ladder, and in and out of the attic.  Up, down, in out, repeat.

If you haven’t yet read the first part of installing Ikea recessed lights, go do it now.  Because I’m about to begin right where I left off.

Stripped Bare wires

Since I had just pulled the wires through the open holes in the ceiling, I began to strip back the outer casing of the Romex 14-gauge wiring with a sharp box knife.  I like to start about 12 inches from the end and just make a nice slit down the center of the white casing.  I’m also always careful to a) not cut myself, and b) not slice either the black or white wires inside the cable.  Slicing down the middle exposes all three wires, including the ground, which is wrapped in brown paper.  I cut away the paper to expose the entire ground, and then trim off the loose white casing.  Now I’ve got 3 foot long wires, and I’m ready to make connections.

Each of the Ikea Blixt fixtures has punched holes with a slit for the wires to go through.  I use a flat blade screw-driver and punch out one (it doesn’t really matter which one).  I then push the Romex cable through the hole, and add a plastic shim between the cable and metal edge of the box (you can find these shims in the electrical aisle of your Home Depot or Lowes.  I also move one of the spring loaded clamps on the side of the electrical box on the light to open the whole thing up.  Then I push both cables through the plastic shim, and all the way into the box.

Then it’s time to strip the Hot (black) and neutral (white) wires.  At this point I still haven’t turned off the main power to the garage, at the circuit breaker box.  I’m not working with any live wires – yet.  I’ve just installed these wires, and first want to connect them in parallel to each of the three lights.  Parallel in this case, means all the same color wires are connected together blacks, white, and grounds.  (If I were going to wire them in series, I’d do it differently).  After that’s done, I’ll pull a wire from one of the lights, down the wall, and connect it to the switch.  That’s when I turn off the power – when I’m working with a LIVE circuit.

When connecting the three Blixt lights, I decided to do it in parallel. That way if one light burned out, the others in the ceiling would still work.

Using the 14-gauge setting on my wire stripper I pull back about 3/4 of an inch to expose the bare copper wire.  I twist the all the black together (the two Romex wires) using my lineman’s pliers, and then wrap the stranded copper wire from the canned light fixture around them.  I then cap all that with a wire nut.  All in all there are three black together – Romex from one light, Romex from another light, and the fixture.  Then I carefully tuck that inside the box, and repeat with the ground (green) and White (neutral) wires.  I’m careful to make sure the wire nut completely covers all the bare copper on each of the black and white wires.  Twisting the wire nuts can be tough, but it’s a very important step to make sure it is tight.

When all the connections are made, I push the wires inside the box, replace the spring loaded cover, and carefully push the entire blixt light into the ceiling, box first.  The box slides through the hole, and the recessed part of the light slides up, too.  There are little spring clamps that hold the entire thing in place, making for a neat install.

Once the holes were cut, I simply inserted the recessed lighting fixtures into the ceiling

Now it was time to turn off the power at the breaker box for the garage.

Carefully I went over to the switch on the wall, and used my wire tester to make sure that there was no power in the box.  The last thing I want is a little surprise when I begin to strip the wires.  I’ve been shocked before, and it is NOT fun.

Earlier in the week, I cut out the drywall, and replaced the old 1-switch box with a much larger, and newer blue 4-switch box.  Eventually I want to have 3 switches (inside garage, outside garage, and attic lights) and a fan control all next to the door in one central spot.  I had to climb into the attic with my flashlight and fish a line from the attic down the wall to the switch box.  This can be the most difficult part, if you don’t know what to do.  I’ve spent hours searching for the right location before, and was hoping that this time would be easier.

I knew approximately where the wall with the switch was, so I carefully climbed around the attic until I was above that spot.  Then I began to look for the wires that came from the breaker box and went down the wall to the switch (the power has to come from somewhere).  I found the spot, and saw that the hole in the ceiling joist was large enough to put another cable through.  I got lucky!  Sometimes you need to drill another hole in a stud or joist – which I don’t like to do if I can help it).  One way to check if you are in the right area is to shine a flashlight through the hole and then go down to the box on the wall and see if you see any light.  If you do, you are in the right place!

The key tool for this job is a Fish Tape.  You can find them on Amazon, or in the electrical aisle at the hardware store.  Basically it’s a long coat hanger.  A slightly flexible metal rod that goes inbetween the wall used to pull wires.  I pulled out about 5 feet of the metal rod, and began to gently push it through the hole in the attic joist and through the wall.  Then I climbed out of the attic and looked at the switch box.  I could see the fish tape.  If you have ever tried to do this, you know how lucky this is to get it on the first try.

You can see the fish tape sticking out from between the wall and the electrical box. This really helps pull wires from the attic through the wall.

Now I had to connect a new piece of Romex to the Fish Tape.  I did this with black electrical tape.  Then I went back up into the attic and pulled out the fish tape with the wire attached.  And up came the cable.  The hard part was done!

I connected the wires in the attic to the light on the end (the same way as before), and then began to connect the wires to the switch.  That part is mostly the same, but instead of using wire nuts to connect the wires to each other, I connected them to the switch.  But there is a specific way to do this so it all works.

Basically there are three cables coming into the box – the hot line (existing), one line for the outside lights (existing), and the one I just pulled down from the attic (new).

I like to label each and every wire. Here you can clearly read what the wire is to be used for. Sometimes I use a code, and then keep track of it in my Moleskin Home Journal

First I carefully marked each cable, and then disconnected everything.  I had to connect all the grounds together (and to the switches), then connect all the whites together with a great big wire nut.  Easy enough.  The tricky part is with the Hot (black) wires.  I took the hot black wire (coming from the circuit box), and connected two new short pieces of black wire to it.  These are called pigtails.  This turned one wire into two.  It’s like making a Y, if you catch my drift.  Then I put one end of one pigtail into the bottom screw of one switch, and the other into the bottom end of the other switch.  This was the power from the circuit box coming into the switch.  Then I put the black wire from the outside lights into the top screw of one switch, and the black wire from the new line into the other switch.  There are NO white wires going to either of the switches.

I think about it like this – the power comes into the switch, and then leaves to go to the light.  Here’s a photo of everything put together.

Here are two rocker light switches installed in the 4 switch box. The one on the right is for the Blixt lights, and the one on the left is for the outside light. My next project will be to add a switch for the lights in the attic, as well as a switch for some fans.

Then it was just a matter of covering the blue box and exposed wires with an outlet cover, and turning the breaker back on.

recessed lighting in a garage

This is what it looks like when it was all done.  I turned off all the lights in my garage and you can see that the bench is well lit, with no shadows.