Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Progress Report 10.17.12 - More Upper Level Lighting

Went back to Home Depot to pick up another bracket and some more lumber.  I'll have to find some at another store as I bought out everything at the HD by work.  Yesterday, I partially mounted a 16ft section of LED lights and needed to complete the next section to mount the full string.  The initial purchase the other day was to be a test.  If it didn't work out, I would have return the brackets.

The new valance is really easy to install.  It's rock solid too!  I simply used dry wall screws to mount the steel brackets to studs in the wall.  Mounted the string of lights around the corner over East Ottawa and over toward West Blue Island.

The LED lights I found on Amazon.com are easy to work with.  Simply add a power supply (around $11) and solder the two wire leads.  Regarding the question yesterday, if you need to make a turn, you can always cut the light strip after every third LED (where marked).  Simply solder wire leads to both ends and make your turn.

Below are photos of tonight's progress.  I'm really pleased how it lights up the upper level.  It has always been so dark (even more so evident since lighting the lower level).  I plan on filling in any gaps in the blue back drop later down the road.  That's low on my priority list right now though.


Downtown Ottawa is looking good under the new lights.






4 comments:

  1. Steve,
    Thanks for the idea of cutting them, that should work for a couple of locations.
    If I can get my valance made for the layout, I'm going to try and follow the curved layout fascia with the valance as well. So I will need to flex the lighting to follow the valance.
    Again, the lighting looks great and thanks for posting this!
    Allen...

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  2. Steven,
    I just did some snooping online, found they have flexible LED rope.

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  3. Just check the brightness on it. I was using some Christmas LED rope lights and they were not nearly bright enough.

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  4. I wondered about that. Online pictures do not do any justice.
    I'm heading out this weekend to do some checking.

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