Christmas, finally

Christmas came a little late for Mary Ellen this year. Well, that's not exactly true, since she did have a pile of presents to open on Christmas Day! But, her "big" present just wasn't ready in time. Now it's done, and her response was just what the hubby would hope: "I LOVE my new under-cabinet lights! They look great!" Here's the final product:

Mary Ellen was willing to wait patiently for the final result, because she was involved in every step of the project. We wanted to convert to LED lighting, and I started by buying a kit at Home Depot. Once I got it home, I realized that it wouldn't do at all. We couldn't bend it around the corners, and while it could be shortened, the cut-off portion could not be used elsewhere - it was just wasted. I returned it, and after some research, settled on this system from Lee Valley:

Lee Valley Warm or Natural White LED Tape Lighting System

In addition to enough LED tape to make the span, I bought the required power supply (I needed the biggest, 60-watt supply), connectors,  and also a remote dimmer switch. I chose the most LED's per foot (36) and chose Warm White as the color. The material cost totaled almost exactly quadruple what the Home Depot kit cost.

Here's what the LED tape looks like, stuck to a test piece. The little copper pads allow you to link segments together. 

The instructions suggested several possibilities for mounting, including just sticking them to the cabinet, but I came up with another way that works really well. The LED tape is mounted on an angle facing 45 degrees away from you when you're standing at the counter. That ensures you'll never see the bright LED's themselves, just the warm light. This picture of the profile of the test piece makes it a little more clear:

I brought that little test piece home, wired it, and we both thought it was just fine. So, the next step was to make enough of that profile to chase all the way around the kitchen cabinets:

Each piece above was made for a specific cabinet. I then brought all that home, along with a miter saw, and installed it all.

Satisfied with that, it all came back down, and back to the shop for final assembly and finishing. As you can see in the initial photo, I stained it to match the cabinets. Not hard, since I made those cabinet doors too! The stain is Bartley Honey Gel Stain.

I wasted a bit of money when I order all the supplies from Lee Valley, because I bought several extra connectors to wire everything together. But when I got them, I really didn't like them. They are too big, too hard to hide, and they make the last couple of LED's aim the wrong direction:

The instructions said you could also solder the segments together, and that's exactly what I did. In the photo below, you can also see see the little plywood stiffener I glued at the angles that fit around the corner cabinets, just to keep the pieces together as I transported and installed them.

I used a similar technique, along with a zip-tie strain relief, to attach the wiring at one end of each segment.

After all that was done, I brought everything back home and re-installed it. All was left was to complete the final wiring. I could have done it myself, but... do you remember the story of Sharon's Cabinet? Here's master electrician Bob Zimmerman doing a little payback for that effort! It was fun to work alongside him, and I learned some good techniques for making added wiring like this as unobtrusive as possible. All the power supply and dimmer stuff was mounted in the light box behind the existing stained glass "window" - that was a prior project that Dave Russell and I did years ago.

I think this may have a consequence that was unintended, but very welcome. Once we saw our counter tops all brightly lit, we both said, "Wow, we keep a lot of junk on our counters!" Maybe we can be a bit neater. Here's a row of tiles that Mary Ellen has collected in our travels - that's where they lived prior to this project, but they often were hidden behind other stuff. I hope we can keep them largely uncovered!