Pimp My Garage - Page 11

Thanks jesto, I'm following yours as well, and of course you're in good hands. Feel free to steal away!

A few things to keep in mind, in case any of it helps:

- The 3" lights I used (sent a link to Jeff) are halogens, so they run hot. The base of the cans is permitted to lie directly on drywall or wood ceiling (bottom of the soffit in my case) though. Since my soffit is fabric covered (although fire retardant), I may add thin masonite rings under them to keep them off the fabric, not sure yet. I tested yesterday, leaving them all full on for an hour, and felt the trim rings, they do warm up, but not nearly as hot as the fixture itself.
- They are plenty bright; actually, if I had planned on doing the soffit with lights from the outset (it was a late addition, not in the original plan), I could easily have skipped the ceiling cans. My space is 23x17 (21x17 taking away the false wall), and there are a total of 14 3" cans in the soffits - 5 on each side, and 4 in the back. Brighter than running the 6 4" ceiling cans.
- If you're planning columns, work out the can location with them in mind; I had to balance between spacing them neatly between columns, or having them evenly distributed along the soffit, and I close the latter, to keep the lighting fairly even.

Not a ton of progress this weekend. Saturday was mostly yardwork - weeds had gotten out of control. Sunday was rainy and windy, so didn't want to spend all day outside - but did get a few things done:

- added fabric (Commando cloth) over the insulation above the area behind the screen.
- added trim fabric to the edges of the bulkhead where I screwed up and ran short on fabric on the big piece - actually looks pretty good, relieved - the fabric sucks up light so effectively that you can't see it at all from the ground, even with lights on.
- cut out for a couple access panels in the soffit (access to junction box where soffit lights are wired; access to outlet where rope light is plugged in), and made the access panels, covered them, and put them in place (just friction fit now, will add some velcro).
- trimmed off excess fabric on the inside of the soffit, so now I get a nice clean edge on the rope light effect

Trying to stay focused on the comparatively short list of items I really should finish before getting the carpet in - not that it always works that way, I'm more of a starter than a finisher, so I have to force myself to resist the temptation to move onto the next, more interesting task, before finishing the one before (like working on the columns before I've finished the soffit fabric).

Gratuitous picture of the day - area above and behind the screen all covered up:

Thanks guys!

The white chair serves a couple purposes: (1) stool to stand on to get the bits of fabric up behind the screen on the sides, where the ladder wouldn't fit; (2) after I finish something noticeable, a place to sit down and say "hey, from this distance, it doesn't look half bad"

LOL, oh yeah, that reminds me that my work table is our old dining table from years ago - glad we never threw it out!







Sadly, I have a nice workbench that I built several years ago, but its buried in bits of other projects.

Lol, me either. The thought of that many steps in reverse in my build certainly outweigh any dreams of greater bass output at this point!

However - an IB in the attic space at some point down the road isn't out of the question.

Thanks a lot RT - how did I do on my carpet choice (couple pages back)? ;-)

Woot!

*starts drafting revised signature*

Thanks Jeff - you reminded me I need to post some kudos in your thread on that pimped out rack, that lighting looks hot.

Surprisingly enough, its a permitted build, and they're OK with it - maybe because it doesn't qualify technically as habitable space due to being attached to a detached garage?