{"id":7279,"date":"2022-04-04T19:04:56","date_gmt":"2022-04-05T02:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/?p=7279"},"modified":"2022-04-04T19:05:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-05T02:05:00","slug":"drywall-finish-painting-lights-the-truckee-workshop-part-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/2022\/04\/drywall-finish-painting-lights-the-truckee-workshop-part-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Drywall Finish, Painting & Lights – The Truckee Workshop Part 18"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There has been a lot of details left to finish my workshop. If you are just jumping in to this, check out my overview of all the posts on how I built this shop: the Truckee Workshop<\/a>. In the last post, I talked about how I got the drywall installed. At this point in the project I was way over budget, and the quote to finish the drywall was more than I could swallow. So, I opted to do some smooth wall texturing on the inside of the building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I did one coat of drywall mud, sanded it down with 100 grit, blew off the dust with my air compressor, did a second coat of mud extending the first a little further, sanded again with 100 or 120, and blew off the dust one final time. I could have gone back and fixed up a few little nicks and dings, but I didn’t feel like doing it. After all, it is just a workshop, and it is going to get beat up. I find “mudding” pretty enjoyable, but my wrists start to give me trouble after a while. The sanding took forever and was the part I liked the least. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I bought two 5 gallon buckets of primer from Ace and started painting. I should have taken the time to drive to Home Depot in Reno, as I later learned the primer was quite a bit cheaper from the big box store. I also decided to buy paint from Home Depot; they saved me enough money to make the drive from Truckee worth it — especially in the electric car. It is about 52 miles round trip from my house. At around 300 Wh\/mile it takes 15.6 kWhr of energy to make the trip. At about $0.18 per kWhr that is about $2.80 for the entire trip — well, probably a bit more given the charger isn’t 100% efficient, but still way cheaper than what it would cost to drive my gas guzzling truck. In the truck, at ~18 mpg, and $5\/gallon in diesel (it is probably more), I’m looking at $14+ for the trip. And the truck might be pulling 15 mpg…depending on various driving conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I painted the walls a basic off white; “Swiss Coffee” from Home Depot with their Behr Marquee paint. I did not want to have to do two coats, and some of the Ace paint might have required it, but the Behr paint went on fine with one coat. I think the primer helped a lot, and this paint did have some “primer” in it according to the sales people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One I had the ceiling painted I started to install the lights. I discussed my lighting plan in a prior post: designing workshop lighting<\/a>. I was curious if what I designed would work out. I hung the lights from the ceiling and used a little bit of romex to reach the light. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now…the American made “Prime Lights” from Austin Texas had several quality issues. One of the 3-lamp “bolt” lights was missing a dummy tombstone. No big deal; they are going to send me another one. But one of the expensive 4-lamp “stingray” lights was flipping my breaker. I figured I had done something wrong…which would be strange because wiring is easy…but all my wiring looked okay. I took apart the lamp, and found that it was completely mis-wired at the factory! Take a look at the pictures below; the one on the left is wrong — the black and white wires are hardwired together on he two middle connections. The photo on the right is after I fixed it; the whites are on one side, and the blacks are on the other. I was shocked that they made such a bad mistake!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I actually had another problem where one of the connectors was wired backwards. I had to snip it off and wire-nut the connector to fix the issue. I’m surprised I encountered so many quality control issues. Given the high price of “Prime Lights” they should have had better quality control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Despite the problems, the actual lighting is awesome! It is so bright in the shop with virtually no shadows. In fact, I only installed two of the three lamps in the bottom row of lights, as I thought it was excessively bright. I originally was going to put the lights on two switches — half the lamps on one switch and the other half on another switch, but I ended up getting lazy and putting them all on one circuit. I think one switch is a good idea; in general I just want to turn on one switch, and I think if I had two I would have just turned them both on all the time. So, I still think this was a good idea, but my lighting lumens might have been overkill. I will know for sure a bit more when I start doing actual work and video recording. <\/p>\n\n\n\n