Something that my gradually-taking-shape home office is missing entirely is lighting.
See this light?
Well it used to be the only form of illumination in the entire L-shaped verandah/sleepout. And when we closed in the corner for the office (see here), it ended up on the other side (i.e. the verandah side) of our new wall. Here it is - that really bright spot you can see on the top right.
So that means that there is no lighting to speak of in the office, which is obviously not fantastic.
The other problem with the office is that there is virtually no roof space at all, through which to run electrical wiring. Nevertheless, since the best option for lighting the room is a light hanging from the ceiling, we really wanted to make it happen!
So, we bought some electrical wire and ran it up alongside the existing doorway (the one that leads directly to our lounge room, near my new desk). Note: We didn't connect it to the existing wiring in the house. That's the electrician's job. We're just working with non-live wiring right now.
And we drilled a hole to run it up into the ceiling.
Then we very carefully pried away one end of that board on the ceiling, and fashioned a very sophisticated hook mechanism out of an old wire clothes hanger to pull the electrical wire through to the gap in the virtually non-existent ceiling cavity. How clever are we?
We dragged the wire along to the join of the next board...
And pulled it through the hole we had made where my future hanging light would go, then tied a nice generous knot so that we don't run short on wire for the light fitting.
Then we carefully hammered the board back into the ceiling so it didn't actually fall down...
And moved to the other end of the ceiling, where the next ceiling board met our newly-built wall, and pried it away just enough to push the wire through it as well...
And then pulled it through a little hole directly above the VJs of our new wall, that we could cover later with a cornice.
The ceiling boards got another hammering just to make sure they were back in securely...
And then we ran the wiring through our new wall and down neatly alongside one of our new doorposts back through the floor, to be covered in the future by some timber trim.
Before it made it all the way to the floor though, we poked it back through the wall and knotted it again at an appropriate height for a light switch...
And labeled it "chandelier" (while also running some additional wiring next to it for a light to go above our new doorway on the verandah side as an "outdoor light") with a new knot.
Safety Note: Since all electrical work in Australia should be completed by a licensed electrician, we don't recommend even going this far running non-live wires yourself. Of course we never follow our own advice. In the interest of saving ourselves some cash, we decided to undertake the slightly complicated ceiling wire running on our own instead of paying an electrician $200 an hour to do the same thing, so everything is in place and ready to go for the actual connecting of the wires.
It will certainly be a happy day when my chandelier goes in! Yes, I'm getting a chandelier in my office! My boss can't understand why an office deserves a chandelier, but I'm determined. Why can't an office be interesting, huh?! I'll be spending most of my life in that room! It's going to be interesting, by hook or by crook!
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