Dome Light Installation 101

You know there's a problem when you're trying to play an interactive video game such as Wii tennis or Kinect Sports, and both you and your guests keep whacking the damn, low-hanging chandelier in the TV room in your zest to move your limbs. Yet another reason to replace a brand new, fully functional item in the house.


Because neither Tung nor I are very well-versed in the art of home improvement, we confess we almost gave up when we first cracked open the box and thought, due to the crappy instructions included, that we were missing some parts, But after getting over the wussiness of wanting to give up early, and maybe partly from the laziness of not wanting to drive back to Home Depot, we decided to give it a go.

Let me just stress that a dining chair ghetto-rigged with two Yellow Pages books for height enhancement is not the greatest way to go about installing a dome light.


We did have a ladder in the backyard but decided it wouldn't fit in the house, so for the most part of two hours, we came up with various creative (maybe stupid?) ways of enhancing our height, including me holding the parts up to the ceiling with a blunt wooden stick while Tung used both hands to connect the wires together, along with him using my wooden meat pounder and a flat-head screwdriver to chisel away aspestos bits in an effort to create a bigger hole (with no small amount of cursing involved).


Who says kitchen tools don't come in handy during home improvement? This gives a whole new purpose to P90-x arm- and shoulder-workouts, as well as the 5th bokken suburi done on repeat.

Finally, out of desperation, Tung asked to try the tall ladder, so after wrenching it free from the backyard tangle of overgrown winter weeds, I managed to fit it in the house. What a difference an extra step makes--with the right arsenal, Tung was able to finish screwing in the flush-mounted light.


Here's the aftermath of what it takes to install a single dome light for the first time:


And finally, the sweet results:


Clean and ready for some Wii whacking and Kinect volleyball!