Willowcrest - kitchen lighting

Where did she go? What happened?  Did she give up?

No, she got a job, and has been desperately playing real life catch-up.

But it was raining, and raining, and raining, and my motivation wavered horribly.  I sent a whiny email to The Camp about not having time to make anything anymore.  So of course today I perversely sat down and made something.

A mess!  Well, a mess would have been interesting.  Instead, I made a ceiling, which is likely something you will never notice if you ever see the house in person.  There's more details to add for this, I just need to get some more shiny sided poster board and figure out the trim around the lights.

I raved about beautiful decorative ceilings in a previous dollhouse post, but a 20th or 21st century kitchen doesn't have that kind of detailing, unless it's a really expensive house.  When was the last time you looked at your kitchen ceiling?  Do you even know if you have pot lights, or how many there are?  I didn't think so.

The ceiling is illustration board, with circles awkwardly cut out.  The pot lights are blister bubbles from some random expired medicine I found while digging through my cabinet.  I added  3/16" strip wood around the edges for a minor drop down ceiling so I had room for the wiring to run.

And the wiring?  Ooh, the wiring.  I got that from Evans Designs.  Four LED lights hooked up to a single transistor.  I used 2 sets, and I 'should' be able to attach them to my dollhouse tape runs, no problem.  There was plenty of space on these for me to spread them out, and I was even able to drop one of them down so it will light up below the microwave.  The bulbs were a little over an eighth of an inch wide, and the transistor exactly 1/8" thick.

Since the ceiling is so big, and I wanted to test and make sure it would run ok without hooking it up to the main house wiring, I had bought a junction splice so I could make a temporary testing board.  I was rather shocked when I discovered that my lead-in wire didn't fit in it!  So now this project is on hold again, but at least I've made a little more progress.

I'm fairly certain that Judy Ryden's blog inspired me, or simply did what I was wanting to do first, so I'm giving her credit here.  She's the only one I've found forging pathways for DIY LED lighting in dollhouses, and has some fantastic tips and tutorials.

Next on my extensive to-do list is getting more poster board so I can finish the ceiling and template the floor, and figuring out the LED pendant lights that will hang over the sink.  I also need to work out the wall around the door, and I want to build a pass-through instead of a wall between the dining room and kitchen.