Since we bought our house, we tried to gradually renovate and improve some part of it which we either did not like too much. Overall, everything is "perfect" but some changes can produce big and bright results.
Here is a non exhaustive list of what we have done so far:
- Extended hard wood floor (on the main floor)
- Backyard remodelling
- Repainting the exterior of the house (mainly touch up)
- Home Energy Evaluation check up
- Radon mitigation system
All these were mostly done before we moved in.
Then we spent about a year in and asked ourself what else could be changed (I love home projects and always need to change stuff...).
All homes in the neighbourhood are pretty much the same and have these...
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| Ugly lights... |
...ugly lights all around!
This one is from our kitchen, remember those pictures? Here
...but we had some more in the living / dining room as well as in the stairs heading to the first floor. Not only they are ugly but they consume a lot of energy!
Here is a recap of the energy used by all these "ugly lights":
1) Kitchen: 6 x 65W per light bulbs = 390W
2) Dining room: 11 x 65W per light bulbs = 715W
3) Stairs: 6 x 65W per light bulbs = 390W
So overall, and without counting all the other recessed lights, we are using nearly 1500W!!! As preventive action, I already replaced all the other light bulbs throughout the entire house with energy saving ones, but those one I could not due to the design of the lights...
So we decide to "test" a local electrician, first for the kitchen area and if he would pass the test (= did an awesome job), we would contract him for the second part.
These three guys were super efficient. In less than 3 hours, they had removed the chandelier and fixed 6 recessed lights instead. The result is just AMAZING!!!
Total cost: about $100.- per lights (pretty much standard price).
Look by yourself:
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| The "new" kitchen (the hole is where the chandelier was hanging) |
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| This is how the hole got patched |
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| And this is the patched hole |
Once the patching is done, simply paint on top of it and you are all done!!
So now we have a total of 13 recessed lights throughout the entire kitchen!!! ...and we only use 15W CFL / Energy saving light bulbs with a brightness of 65W each (=195W) ;-) --> this is great for my green foot print
...so I guess we are going to keep them for the next big part: the dining and living room area!!!
