LOL. I would once have said that all this is a bit out of my wheelhouse, but these skills are now all in my wheelbarrow–or “whilbarr” as they say in these parts– so here goes. (Like the one in the diagram to the right, I strive to maintain equilibrium in my own life. Doing so isn’t always easy. But it is healthy.)
I’ve been working on a home improvement project that involves better lighting for the kitchen area, something that’s always been a problem here at Chateau Right. Most of the house is post-and-beam construction, with what are now called structural insulated panels (SIPs) nailed to the outside framework. Electrical wiring has always been a problem (it’s better now, but when the late Mr. Right and I built the house, SIPs were very new, and were called at the time, “stress-skin panels” and the options were nowhere near as good). I’ve recently been reading some horror stories online about the OSB on the older panels deteriorating to dust. That didn’t happen here, although–when we removed the original cedar siding, and I went over the outside of the house with a fine-tooth comb, I found several places where the contractor who was helping us clearly didn’t know what to do with this new method of construction, and had fit things together very poorly. I must have used several cases of that spray-foam insulation to fill the gaps, shored things up in several places, and then covered the entire outside of the house with 1/4″ plywood, wrapped it in Tyvek, and covered it with Benjamin Obdyke Slicker Rainscreen. (This creates a space to allow moisture dissipation, insures that there’s a “way out” for any wetness that gets between the Tyvek and the siding, and also discourages insect incursions, as it would be rather like climbing their way through a kitchen scrubber. Very useful stuff.)
Then I sided the house with LP SmartSide (second generation, after they fixed the initial problems). After calling the company to see if what I wanted to do would work and would not void the warranty, (they said it would, and that it would not), I used 1×12 trim boards and 1×4 trim boards in a vertical board-and-batten arrangement. I could have faked it with T-111, but I didn’t want horizontal breaks every eight feet, and the LP stuff came in 16-foot lengths.
I write as though I did this almost entirely by myself, because I did.
I also write as though this were a full-time project, and I got it done in one fell swoop. Matter of fact, it took about 12 years, start to finish. Along the way, I replaced all the (Pella) doors and windows with Marvin wood-clad aluminum.
I simply love the result. It’s what the late Mr. Right and I wanted–a house that fits the environment and, unlike the compound down the road which Mr. Right used to call El Rancho Grande, it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb. (I’m in southwestern Pennsylvania.)
Please admire those driveway gates. I made those too.
But I digress. Back to the electrical work. (I hate electrical work. Makes my hands ache and my fingers bleed, and reduces my soi-disant “fingernails” to a peeling, split mess. Nevertheless, like The Dude, here and elsewhere, She abides.)
My kitchen is railroad-car style, about eight feet wide and 24 feet long. I’ve taken care of one end of it (below the loft) with wafer lights embedded in the ceiling. But there is section that’s about twelve feet long which reaches up to the cathedral ceiling (how grand that sounds), and thus there’s really no option but surface wiring to get the connections where they need to be.
The cathedral ceiling (2×6 tongue and groove) is a 10-in-12 slope. (This is a pretty steep one, and most commercial fixtures, even those which claim to be able to hang a pendant light on a sloped ceiling and perpendicular to the floor, aren’t “sloped” enough. There’s no cavity behind the 2×6, because that’s closed-cell foam insulation, R-50. So surface wiring is required. This entails manufacturing custom fixtures, built to conform to the ceiling slope, to house the wiring box necessary for light attachment. Six inches square, and with the appropriate slope, 1/2″ MDF, and painted flat black.
I eschewed standard surface wiring kits, because they don’t help with the ceiling angle, and I went with metal clad “armorlite” cable:
which I spray painted brown, and clamped to the 2×6 T&G ceiling. (I did this years ago with the ceiling fan). Industrial, and you may prefer something else, but it’s the right sort of “look” for here, in a house which the late Mr. Right and I always hoped would look like an old barn which those who loved it had remodeled into a home.
The custom boxes conform to the ceiling angle, and give me a surface parallel to the floor on which to securely install the electrical box to hold the wiring and from which each light can dangle.
The light fixtures I bought came from Barn Light Electric. They’re lovely. However, as the website states, they’re spun aluminum, not heavy steel, so they’re very light.
And, due to my efforts, at all costs, to avoid clutter and go with minimalism, they are hung from cords.
When I received my (lovely) lamps, the cords looked like this:
And so I started to research ways to straighten them, ways in which I hoped to avoid my usual method of straightening circular knitting needles, which is to dunk them in boiling water for a few minutes, and then stretch…..
Didn’t find much all that useful, to be honest. Most of the posts asserting that “gravity is your friend, just hang them and in a couple of months they’ll straighten out” didn’t fill me with much joy. The lamps are very light. And I have three of them, all of which need to be hung at the same height. Measuring is difficult, when the cords are all riled up.
Still.
“Mother never bred a jibber,” as she liked to say. So here is my solution:
First and most important note: Do this before you connect the light. Do not attempt this on a light which is connected to a live electric circuit.
- Figure out how much cord you need, depending 1) the height of its ceiling attachment, and 2) at what distance you want the light from the floor. No sense straightening out too much more cord than you need.
- Find someplace you can temporarily “hang” the light, with that amount of cord, plus a bit extra, dangling.
- Get a lightbulb. I recommend one shaped like this:
rather than a regular one, and get one with a plastic, rather than glass, housing. Make sure that the base of the lightbulb matches the one in the light itself. I had one lying 0r the right sort lying around (as you do), so I used it. - Get a plastic bag (the one I use is long and narrow, because it’s easier to attach) and less likely to fall off. I like Middle-Eastern food, so had this one on hand. If you don’t have such a thing, suggest you hotfoot it to your local supermarket, and find a product (any product) in a similar bag, even if you’ve no intention of using it. Maybe you can feed the contents to the birds.
- Fill the bag with a couple of pounds of rice or beans.
- Zip-tie the bag around the neck of the lightbulb, as shown. Adjust it so the weight is evenly distributed around the base:
Screw your assembly into the light fixture you’ve hung to straighten. To repeat: Do not attempt this on a light which is connected to a live electric circuit. - The rice bag will weight the light in an even manner, something which is quite difficult to do otherwise. Additionally, it will not put excessive strain just on the cord (as some of the other recommendations I’ve seen do) because it’s screwed into the fixture itself. Your project, at this point, should resemble this:
- Get a hair dryer, and set it on its highest setting.
- Run said hair dryer up and down the length of cord for a few minutes, using fingers to straighten the cord as needed. Do this three or four times over the course of an afternoon.
- Let the thing sit for a day or two, so that the cord “memory” gets accustomed to the idea that it should be straight. If any wiggles remain, straighten them out with the hair dryer technique.
- Lather, rinse, repeat, for any other pendant lamps on the circuit.
That’s it.
You’re welcome.
PS: There are all sorts of “pendant” lights. Please adjust the materials, weights, method, etc. for yours. And, in case I forgot to mention it before: Do all this sort of work before you connect the light. Do not attempt it on a light which is already connected to a live electric circuit.
