installing 15 amp cabinet lights into a 20 amp circuit

[DerbyDad03]

Could you describe the "dedicated chase"? It sounds as if it's inside the wall. It that correct?

[gfretwell]

They have some cord protecting stuff that just sticks to surfaces. It is a plastic "C" shaped stuff that the cord snaps into then you peel and stick. Legal and not bad looking.

[HerHusband]

The upper cabinets at my in-laws kitchen are L-shaped in the corner of the room:

Because the walls were out of plumb and the cabinets referenced off the stove area, I planned a one inch gap in the back corner where the cabinets met. I simply passed the lamp cords up this gap and plugged them into a switched outlet above.

On the left side of the stove I built a special cabinet with two layers of plywood on one side. I routed a half inch groove in each layer, giving me a full one inch slot to pass the cord up from the bottom to the top of the cabinet. You can just barely see the slot in bottom right side of the cabinet, in the photos where they are laying on my garage floor (a bit easier to see in the unfinished cabinets).

In both cases the cord is on the outside of the wall, just passing through the empty spaces in or around the cabinets. The cord is protected and completely out of sight, but plugs into a standard outlet. As you can see in the final photos, the outlets are not visible above the cabinets, even when standing on the other side of the room. I did mount those outlets horizontally to minimize how far they stuck up above the cabinets (visible in the photo with the bare sheetrock).

Anthony Watson

[DerbyDad03]

Nice planning. Nice kitchen.

Man, the old one was pretty beat!

[HerHusband]

Thanks. Yeah, the old kitchen was long overdue for a remodel. They lived there 50+ years, but when we gutted the room we could see framing for different windows indicating it had been remodeled at some point before that (the house is approx 100 years old).

The old kitchen was only 8 feet wide, and actually had a dining table in it too (under the cabinets on the right). To make matters worse, it had doorways at each end, making it the major path to the bathroom and back door. If anyone was working in the kitchen, you could barely get past them to access the bathroom.

They had to replace their refrigerator a few years before we remodeled and the new fridge was a bit deeper than the old one. So much so that they couldn't open the door because it would hit the dining table. As a quick fix, I built them a smaller dining table (See "dining table" on the page below):

We moved the interior doorway to the center of the room, and expanded a

4'x8' section onto the old porch. The difference in usable space is amazing. Several people can stand in the kitchen now and still not get in the way.

It's still a small kitchen, but it's a huge improvement from what they had before.

Anthony Watson

[hrhofmann]

I wish I had known someone who does such great work before I put together a few things for our house.

I really enjoy seeing such great "handwork" in this era of mass production of almost everything that touches our lives.

[Muggles]

That really is a nice kitchen!