I didn’t accomplish much in the garage on Sunday, but I did manage to take down some old, flickery and generally unreliable flourescent lights and replace them with some very inexpensive LED lights. I had previously tried to continue to use two of the old fixtures, including their old fluorescent ballasts, but in general that proved to be more trouble than they were worth. The connectors were already unreliable, and occasionally one of them would just turn off and back on again at intermittent intervals. I grew tired of them, and decided to just take down and take them to the recycling center and replace them with new but inexpensive LED shop lights.

I unplugged the old fixtures and then took them down. They were actually screwed into mostly dry wall, I’m kind of shocked that they didn’t just fall out of the ceiling. We decided to make a run to the El Cerrito Recycling and Environmental Resource Center to get rid of them and the stock of old fluorescent bulbs that we had lying around. They are a great resource, and took everything but the ballasts (I had to snip them out). I guess they have some kind of hazardous chemicals in them, and I have to take them to Richmond Hazardous Waste instead. We have some old paint cans we have to take over there anyway, so that will probably be on next week’s task list.

I didn’t want to replace them with anything expensive, so I decided to continue with some cheap $20 hanging fixtures that I got from Lowes. I had good luck with a couple of these cheap lights from Lowes and manufactured by Lithonia. They actually are an integrated unit: you can’t change the bulbs out, they simply run until they are dead, and then you replace them. They are nice and bright, and I had installed two of them a couple of years ago with no complaints. They are also incredibly lightweight (which could also be considered as “flimsy”) at a weight of 1.7lbs. Ironically, they are listed as “4ft” bulbs, but the fixture length is a little over 45 inches. I purchased four more of these, and hung two of them immediately, with the other two waiting until I can get rid of some telescope grinding equipment. I just used wimpy hooks to attach them to the rafters, but the hooks have too fine a thread to be secure in just dry wall. I’ll have to get a couple of dry wall anchors to fix one in the place I intend.

At about 36 watts a piece, I now burn about 150ish watts for lighting in there, but the garage is actually bright and easy to work in. Huzzah.

Addendum: I also decided that my Workmate rack of yesterday wasn’t entirely adequate. Because it was only fastened to the wall in the center (that’s the only convenient stud to attach it too) it actually looked like it could twist a bit (the wood is soft and the lever arm is relatively long). I decided to change the simple cross bar into a T shape. I took out my Kreg pocket hole jig, and bored two holes in the end of another scrap, and then fastened it to the original crossbar with glue and pocket screws. I drilled a couple of holes along its edge with a Forstner bit, and then fastened it back (a little bit lower) on the wall. Now, since it has fastening bolts along 2 feet of stud instead of just a couple of inches, it’s rock solid.