We also switched out our normal switches for dimmers, which I’m officially obsessed with.  Especially in a media room–dim lights are nice to have.  All in all, installing our own recessed lights wasn’t perfectly smooth.  We hit a few bumps a long the way, but we did it.  And it wasn’t that hard–even for us first-timers. It definitely wasn’t $650 hard.  We’re glad we saved money and did it ourselves, although it wasn’t completely free.

We spent:

$59 on can lights and dimmer switches–thanks to a big help from the remaining balance on our True Value gift card.
$25 on electrical wire.
$30 on patches and joint compound.
$0 on labor.  :)

Total: $114.  Way below the amount we were quoted for labor to just run the wire. This renovation is a great example of saving on some projects and products and splurging on others.  We splurged on our new couch and the carpet we wanted–and other things like electrical and framing out and sheetrocking our own wall we are saving loads of money by doing it ourselves.  It’s pretty addicting.  And the results aren’t too shabby either.

Psst.  I owe you more after shots of this project.  I am well aware.  But we are working on about 3 other things simultaneously for this room and this was the only shot I could give without teasing the heck out of the other projects. Although we are anything but a before and after blog (we like to share every detail as we go), we also like to dedicate posts to one aspect of the transformation–especially lengthy posts like this one.  Hang tight, a full span is not far away.