With our spectacular log lights (if we do say so ourselves) as motivation, it was back to work on the box lights.
These took a bit more prototyping and processing than the log lights did. Despite the single blog post about them, the creation of these bad boys extended over quite a bit of time and progress on the build. These words and images don’t convey nearly enough the brain cells, retries, setbacks, googling, curses, sharp words, and persistence devoured and projected into the world from this process…
BUT, once Eli got the prototype down–and I was in agreement on it 🙂 –“mass” production began. Eli built all the boxes, painted their interiors white (to help brighten the light output), then sliced them up into sections. Three sections would make up each light fixture. We rounded over the edges of the sections and sanded, sanded, sanded. Then,….. (you know the drill…) we coated each one with Polycrylic for that protective finish! Once we had our three coats of finish, we assembled and connected the three sections of each fixture. As always, we were calculated about what pieces of board we used for the light fixtures so we’d get some beautiful wood grain and knot patterns!
Once the wood exterior of the lights were assembled, we made the opaque plexiglass inserts to hide the bulbs from view and spread the light. These also took a lot of brainstorming, a bit of trial and error, and a few broken attempts (and a few broken curse words) before we got the product we wanted. Since it took a few iterations, Eli was particularly proud of the form he created to mold the plexiglass inserts into the correct shape. The inserts had to leave room at the back to slide in past the socket.
Then, it was on to adding the electrical components. Again, we had a lot to research and figure out. Eli’s getting good at this electrical wiring! Because this is a tiny house, we didn’t want the light fixtures to be un-proportionally large. So, we did some searching for smaller bulbs that still had good light output. To throw in a little more complexity, we wanted the light fixtures to be dimmable, so yet another requirement for the bulbs. We settled on some we found at Home Depot that were 750 lumens 60W equivalent LED dimmable bulbs with a E12 candelabra base. They look like normal bulbs, but are in miniature. They’ll put out plenty of light with the five light fixtures. We also decided we wanted the light fixtures to hang lower than originally thought when we placed the electrical boxes in the wall, so Eli put the plate in the back of the fixture higher up.
Then, all that was left was to flip the switch…………………… and they work!! Installed and amazing! Only thing was, we noticed they weren’t dimming very much–definitely not nearly as much as we expected. We spent a good bit of time researching and Eli kept fiddling with his wiring in the fixtures and he tried replacing all the wire connectors thinking that might be it, but still minimal dimming. Finally, Eli took a look at the switch and its wiring, and on close inspection he realized the dimmer switch for the lights had a built-in tiny switch on the side that allowed you to adjust and set a minimum to which the lights could dim. Once we reset that, we could rock some serious mood lighting!
The final piece of the box light fixture puzzle was holding the plexiglass inserts in place once the lights were installed. We landed on velcro (keep it simple stupid) to hold the plexiglass in place once inserted, so the inserts wouldn’t fall out. One nice thing about plexiglass, it’s lightweight. Worked like a charm.
Stunning, gorgeous, brilliant light boxes!
Thanks, Meredith!!
Superb!!! Love those lights! Only a genius would have figured out how to dim them more. Way to go Eli!
You are patient and persistent.
Tracy, great Blog with pictures and detail.
Thanks!!!
What fun!! They look great!
Thanks!! We love them!! We’re really pleased with how they turned out! One of our favorite parts of the tiny house.
And, FYI, I just made some updates to the post to include some adventures in the dimming feature of the lights, so you might want to give the post a second look!