Junction box hell

I'll have to compile some pictures of the ceiling/wall destruction, but here's a nice collection of the horrible wiring in the basement.

Box 1: Trapped in hallway outside bathroom.

Box 2: Close to the main breaker. Eventually hits box 1. 

In the laundry room.

1 in 1 out. Apparently they pieced together some short lengths.

This is definitely different. Never know when you might need a plug in the ceiling.

Main reason why I started ripping down the ceilings.

Not connected to anything - and yeah, it's live.

So, I still have a little bit of the ceiling in the living room to remove, so there may be more crappy fire hazards, but that's a good collection of wiring to fix. Most of them span some long lengths too, so it's not going to be an enjoyable task figuring out where they all head and fixing them.

We have light

Slow going on the new room construction as I've found the electrical situation in the basement is a nightmare, and thus, I'm pretty much tearing out all the ceilings and some walls to rerun the electrical wiring. Before all that I did install the new lights for the exercise room. At first I installed 4 but then realized it wasn't going to be enough light. The "light formula" didn't really work (room width x length x 1.5 = total wattage of light for room). I worked out that 4 60 watt bulbs would be sufficient, but it definitely wasn't.

First attempt with only 4 lights.

Also - I wanted to get a recessed light that wasn't overly "spot-lighty." That's a technical term... After getting the cheapest ecosmart led ones, I traded them in for commercial electric ones. As the recessed light cans I got were also 6" commercial electric ones - the led lights I got were specially made and pretty slick. Instead of just screwing in like the ecosmart ones, they were actually recessed lights and had the proper metal wire catches at the sides, so the lights would slide up into the housing and flush against the ceiling.

Nice and bright!