OPERATION: Night-Light

Holly’s Mom and Merlin came to visit this weekend.

As always, it’s great to have them come to visit. I don’t know if they enjoy it half as much as we do. We get to sponge off their invaluable advice on home repairs and interior decorating.

This weekend was no exception. While Holly and Sandy were doing some painting and working on window treatments, Merlin and I were tackling the installation of an exterior security light. When we eventually have a tenant in our lower level apartment, we wanted to have them be able to navigate the exterior of the house without falling into the woods to be carried away by the raccoons.

We had purchased a nice two headed halogen floodlight with motion sensing action from the local Home Depot. (My buddy Clifford is cringing at the mention of his least favorite place on earth.)

The most difficult part of the project was finding a location for the new light. As there was no light on this side of the house before, we had to do some cutting. The area where we wanted to light up was on the path leading to a gate that takes a tenant into the backyard where there is a rear entrance to the apartment. When it’s late at night it gets very dark in this area. The handy sodium vapor orange glow from the street does not penetrate to this area.

With Merlin’s expert advice, we found that the best location was near the fence and opposite an electrical outlet that we could connect to for power.

After getting all of the necessary equipment, I set to work cutting into the drywall for the switch to operate the light. We then fished the power cable down to the electrical outlet, after tuning off the power to this part of the house (I’ve learned the lesson the hard way).

The next step was to climb our five foot ladder to drill the hole through the asbestos siding and into the wall to put more wires through. This wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. Our ladder, being 5 feet tall was not nearly tall enough. So I, being the daring Tim “The Toolman” Taylor-type, stood on the very top of the ladder to do the drilling.

When it came time to mount the light, it was too far over my head to be able to see the wiring. Luckily I mounted the light between the fence and a storage shed. It happened to be just wide enough for me to play Spiderman and suspend myself between the two. Did I mention that it had rained earlier in the day? That just added a little extra danger. Unlike the original “Toolman”, I was able to complete the project unscathed.

In the end, everything went together and mounted just as Merlin had planned it. He was a lifesaver on this project. For that matter, he has been a sanity saver on all the projects that he has helped me out with since buying our first house. Thanks for all the help Merlin!

The light works great. I haven’t tested the sensitivity of the motion sensor yet. When someone walks down the sidewalk toward the gate of the fence it trips on without blinding the person. That was one of my main concerns when setting this up.

I’m hoping that it will be sensitive enough to ward off the late-night bandits that enjoy rummaging through our garbage. Their preferred route seems to take them past this area. Time will tell…