today's light update.

Picked up these suckers at the Home Depot today- a dozen 5" recessed light enclosures. I actually wanted another six, but the only other box they had was wide open. Since I only need ten for the initial kitchen/living room install, this should be fine. Going to order the trim rings online today as well. In the meantime, today I did this:

That's a rough diagram of their locations (the two on the left aren't really that close to the wall). I figured out where everything should correctly sit mathematically, then realized that totally wasn't gonna work. I ended up using a combination of math and and seat-of-the-pants "this looks about right" engineering. My handyman told me to just punch small holes in the ceiling where I wanted them before he started, but I quickly realized that measuring, say, 120" with a tape measure by yourself on a ceiling is impossible. Instead I put masking tape X's all over the floor with measurements written on them with a Sharpie. He's gonna start on it this week or next week, and we'll transfer the locations from the floor to the ceiling.

In the meantime, I still need to get a bunch of dimmable CFL PAR 30 bulbs (which I'll probalby get online, Home Depot has a craptastic selection) for the six in the main room, and standard PAR 30's for the four in the kitchen. Also need to switches and dimmers. I'm not doing anything too crazy, just a switch for the four in the kitchen, and dimmers for the six in the big room and the Sputnik chandelier (you can see it in this pic). Also need to get the bulbs for that guy. It still hasn't arrived; better check the tracking number on that...