That's what she has now. She's tried a number of styles from the round pucks to the "lighted switches". They are all useless for this closet. Besides, most of those devices especially the cheap ones, really eat batteries.
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Even though it's off the dining room, at the back of the house, it's the only closet on the first floor. The inside of the closet is the same color as all the woodwork. The dark walls and ceiling just suck up the light, plus the closet is about 8 feet deep. She really needs an overhead light.
No attic above it, no basement below it. It's over a outside crawl space, sort of hanging off the back of the house. It runs alongside what we believe used to be an enclosed porch. That was converted into a pantry and half bath long before my daughter bought the house.
I posted about that half bath last November. It's also above the crawl space and the area where the pipes to the sink run is essentially outside. The previous owner said that he turned off the water to the sink in the winter to prevent freezing.
Right after my daughter moved in I installed a recirculating pump under the vanity bottom to bring hot water into the pipes to keep them from freezing. No need to shut the water off for 5 months.
8 feet sounds like a good place for LED strips. Under $20 for 5 meters (16+ feet) of white LEDs and a 12 volt wall wart which can be plugged in wherever there's an outlet and then it's low voltage wiring to the LED strip through whatever type switch you choose - even a door-operated switch. The yard equipment - riding mower, walk-behind mower, backpack blower, leaf chipper, etc are in an 8 x 16 shed out back which has solar power for the 16 feet of LED strip lighting out there. That much light in an 8 foot closet would be a good choice.
What a beautiful old house! I love the simple stained woodwork. So many houses around here have layers and layers of eggshell paint dating back to the mid century or earlier in Victorian homes. I'd say her's is an early turn of the century Craftsman, maybe the late teens, from the bit that I've seen?
I still need to get power to the closet for the wall wart. A receptacle at standard height would be certainly be easier to wire than trying to pull wires inside the wall to a switch and then up to the ceiling. Patching drywall is easy, patching brown bead board, not so much.
I could do it all with surface mount races, but so far I haven't found any brown ones.
Pretty sure I've said 1935 more than once in this thread. ;-)
If you liked the woodwork in the dining room, you'll love the stairway. The second photo zooms in on the recessed panels. That's what you see when you walk in the front door.
Pardon the mess, this was taken on the day we moved her in.
I'm very slowly flipping a circa 1930 house, and the stairway and banister look similar to that. It even once had a light on top of the Newell post. The switch and wiring holes are still there, but the fixture is long gone. It would be far too much work to strip all of the painted trim in the house (all of the trim), but someone stripped the staircase and banister before I bought it. Bare wood, with tiny bits of paint evidence in some corners. I thank them, whoever they are, as it will look very nice after I stain it!
What I find interesting is walking into a house that someone - often times a family - lived in for a decade or even decades and saying "Why did they put up with this for so long? Simple things, like what I found in both my house and my daughter's (the one in this thread).
Example 1 -
Somewhere near the top of the basement stairs will be a light switch that turns on a single light in the basement. Once downstairs, you have to pull 3, 4 or more strings to turn on the rest of the lights. You're all done in the basement? Pull all those strings again on the way out.
One of the first things I did in both my house and my daughter's was connect all the fixtures so that the one switch turns them all on at once. I actually replaced the old pull chain fixtures, but the "connection" part was the key. Could have been done with the old fixtures *decades* ago. All it takes is some Romex and a screwdriver.
Example 2 -
The house I live in has a sloped lot. The back of the first floor is almost a full story above the back yard. When SWMBO and I were looking at the house (35 years ago), one of the first things I noticed was that to get to the back yard you either had to go out the front door and then down around the house or go down the basement steps - to the front of the house - and then make a U turn and go through the basement to the back door. Thing is, there was 2 side-by-side double hung windows in the family room that overlooked the back yard. The hole for a sliding door was already there, all that was needed was a deck and a set of stairs. While SWMBO and I were standing at the window I whispered to her "This place needs a deck."
A family of 6 lived in the house for the previous 30 years, probably making that U-turn trip to the yard and back tens of thousands of times. I built the deck and put the door in within the first 2 months. 35 years of easy access to the yard.
I could list so many "convenience upgrades" that I did in the first couple of years. Not huge renovations, just things that made everyday life easier. We're doing the same kind of things at my daughter's house now. Still makes me wonder why they weren't done sooner.
At some point, someone opened up of the first floor of my daughter's house by opening the walls between the dining room and the living room and kitchen. This is the view from the kitchen:
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We're OK with the white trim in the kitchen and over the peninsula, but are planning to redo the trim between the living room and dining room. I assume that whoever opened up the space was either too lazy or too cheap to try and match the rest of the original trim. It's oak. I'm sure we can match the stain even if we have to mix our own.
Exactly. 16 feet gives you two 8 foot lengths either aimed down or mounted at 45 degrees and providing down and across lighting to better see texture.
Warm white LEDs may be more pleasing to the eye if somewhat less bright than the cool white. After multiple eye surgeries (cataracts, partial cornea transplants, now 20/25 and 20/30 and readers for anything closer than the end of my arm), I tend to look for the least annoying lighting for any purpose.
I found some brown Wiremold at Lowes or HD a few years ago - haven't looked recently. More likely an online item than something at the store.
Our house is 19070's and originally had stained stairs but the second owner had an "interior decorator" in the family - one I'd rate below the level of some of the stupid things done on the TV "makeovers" and EVERYTHING on the stairs (and much of the rest of the woodwork) was painted white - even the beige switch and outlet covers (and some of the outkets) in most of the house. They painted the paneling in the family room but there's a fireplace in there which has seen some BIG fires from the smoke evidence on the brickwork and they did NOT clean the walls before they painted - you could rub the paint off with your finger :-( That's been remedied - lots of sanding and vacuuming - and the room no longer has the fake beams but does have the type of crown molding it should have had originally - my first attempt at crown molding and I have a real appreciation for those who can do it quickly ;-)
Yes, I find the plastic Wiremold in brown, like this stuff, but I don't think it can be used with 120 VAC. If I do decide to go with a wall wart and LED's then it'll be fine.
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As far as lighting, I know just what you mean. As I age, harsh light is really beginning to bother me. I'm sure that there is cataract surgery in my future.
I'm a big fan of dimmers. I have them just about every room.
When we go camping, I run a couple of strings of LED's in the "trusses" of my pop-up canopy. I have a dimmer for them too. :-)
That'll work for an extension cord but not permanent wiring. "Permanent" is a funny word, though.
OTOH, I'm a big fan of bright-white light. The fluorescents in my shop are 6500K. I can see far better with lots of high-temperature lighting. I'm expanding into a couple of other rooms and can't find reasonably priced daylight LED fixtures. All I could find are 4500K. I'm going to need a lot of them.
I have cataract surgery in my future, too. So my optometrist tells me. If we live long enough, we probably all will. I'm not worried about cataracts at all. OTOH, the glaucoma thing worries me a bit.
We have dimmers on our big fans, too. We have some dimmers but rarely use them. Rather, most rooms have multiple lamps. We do have dimmers in the kitchen, where they're next to useless.
That makes sense but I wouldn't have enough light to read by in the first place. ;-)
I have both, now. A switch at the bottom of the stairs (3-way on the stairs) that turn on a fixture en every "room". I'm adding enough lighting to make the space useful for something other than collecting junk. Each room is separately switched (a couple of banks for each room).
That's essentially what we have, though the stairs are in the middle of the house, off the kitchen. There is a deck but no ground access. I'm not sure how to put it in without expanding the deck a lot. I don't want to mess up access to the basement, either.
Decks aren't exactly trivial upgrades. Have you checked on the price of lumber recently? ;-)
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