I like having bright lighting at night, especially when I stay up late, and I found the standard fluorescent fixture in my dorm room too dim. So, when I moved in, I decided to hang some lamps from the ceiling. I wanted this lighting to be dimmable, and, luckily for me, most of the rooms in my old dorm have unused junction boxes in the walls from the original phone system, perfect for holding a dimmer switch. This hole in the wall allowed me to install the switch, with wires running in to and out of it, which was necessary because there was no easy way to wire directly into the room's electrical system. So, I ran some 16 AWG speaker wire (I liked the clear insulation) up from the nearby outlet, into the dimmer, up the wall, and across the ceiling to the different spots in the room I thought needed extra light most: the desk, bed, and dresser. Running the wires was quite difficult, because the ceiling was basically 3/8" of plaster over cement, so the nails in the wire staples I used had to be very short. If they were to long they wouldn't go in all the way, or, worse, would tear chunks out of the plaster. Eventually, however, I got the wire up, put in the light fixtures, then hung up the lime green Japanese-style lanterns that I had bought during summer break 2002.

Over the summer of 2004, however, the asbestos floor tiles in my room were abated, and while I had gotten assurances from the house manager that my wiring would be able to stay in place, the workers tore it from the ceiling anyway (leaving all sorts of nice holes I had to Spackle later). Luckily, I was able to salvage the dimmer and light sockets from the trash, so I could construct a new lighting scheme. This time I put all of the connections in a plastic box, and more out-of-view, since the junctions I left exposed in the old lights may have been a code problem. I used 14 AWG flat speaker wire this time, trying to make the the wiring blend into the ceiling more. These wires were also wire-stapled to the ceiling, this time in straight line paths from the lighting spot back to the connection box on the wall. Since I started hanging the wire at the point where I wanted the light to be and just eyeballed the angle back to the connection, the wires didn't meet exactly, and three lines created an interesting set of intersections right near the junction box. Later, on one of my many excursions to Pearl, I found some glow-in-the-dark tape. This tape was exactly twice the width of wire, so I improvised a device to cut the tape exactly in half, and then taped over the top of the wire. Finally, I had to make new lamp shades to replace the trashed ones. I think the shades, and the setup in general, turned out really well.