Replacement lighting just in time for Halloween

fluorescent spooky light

getting ready to connect the wires from power to the new light fixture

and the new incandescent light sheds exponentially more light than the old one

We had fluorescent lights in part of the basement and they just kept having flickering, on/off issues- it was watching a scary movie but in our own basement.  You'd flip the switch and it may or may not light up-if it did go on, it was often with only one out of two bulbs and the light would flicker, waver and dim. "Creepy" definitely applied and we weren't going for the haunted house look.  (Although I do think some spiders benefited from the arrangement because we just couldn't see them with the bad lighting.)  So we took on a new lighting project.

We turned off the power to the area in question - this is where the those work lights come in handy-the kind you can plug in with a long oranges extension cord into the outlet a room or two away.  We used one similar to this one featured by Home Depot: http://www.homedepot.com/p/HUSKY-75-Watt-Metal-Shield-Incandescent-Trouble-Light-HD-408PDQ/204222074#.UkOfaz948g8  to light the way for the project.  We took down the old fluorescent lights (and recycled the bulbs through our local household hazardous waste collection events), put up metal housing units for the new lights, connected the power wiring to the wiring of the new fixtures, put on safety nuts, put in a fresh incandescent bulb, turned the power back on, flipped the switch and viola, let there be light!

It's great to actually be able to see in that part of the basement although there's a  certain poetic sadness (but not much)  to the loss of traditional creepy basement lighting (or rather lack thereof).