back to home emergency lighting project

1 starting the holes:


Instead of doing all the lights at once "in parallel", I decided it would be best to do one from start to
finish first, so I could learn the lessons in advance to make the others go easier and faster. It was a good
decision.

While each room had its own unique challenges, I chose to start with the Kitchen. All the walls in the house
are 3/8" sheet rock covered by 1/2" of plaster, but the kitchen also had some paneling on the wall to add
another 1/4" or so, making this wall thicker than the already exceptionally thick walls in the rest of the
house.

I networked the house years ago, and already learned some lessons from that. The most technical challenges
are locating where to make the holes into the wall from the basement, and getting a leader line fished through
the hole upstairs. This time I used a (dangerously) strong magnet to locate the studs upstairs and then used
the magnet and a small screwdriver to locate my drill point in the basement. I wasn't totally confident I'd
be able to feel where the magnet was from the basement, but it snatched the screwdriver out of my hand!

Then I pre-drilled holes with a small spade and used a saber saw to cut 3" x 2.5" holes for the lights, about
3" below the ceiling. My basement isn't finished, so it was relatively easy to drill a hole up into the walls
from below. Just making a small hole would have been cleaner, but it's very difficult for a single person to
catch a fish tape from below, so this was just a trade-off for a huge time-saver, and the light will more than
cover up the hole.

(I didn't get pictures of the entire process in the kitchen, so some of the pictures are from the living room
which I did later)

1 locating basement hole magnet (it's a big-un - soft drink cap for scale)	2 locating basement hole screwdriver (I think I found the magnet)	3 basement hole drilled	4 clean-up in aisle 5	5 wall marked and pilot holes drilled	6 hole cut (just look a how thick that wall is!)
7 hole position

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