I suppose there are a few people born post-1990 that have never heard of the McGyver TV series from the mid-to-late 1980s.  The male lead had an uncanny knack for throwing together a bunch of improbable ingredients to create a one-time use device to foil bad guys and their evil ways.  For people as aged in the tooth as your humble author, the phrase "I had to McGyver it to get it to work" or whatever close approximation thereof, was fairly standard issue.  For example, I made the base for a rotatible CB base station beam antenna out of an old high chair!  I took the back off, cut a hole in the middle of the seat, ran the vertical mast through it, mounted the rotator motor to a piece of plywood under the high chair seat and perched the beam antenna atop the mast.  Then three separate ropes were used as guy wires to keep the whole mess from toppling over in  the wind, securing the other ends to two trees and the house.  Two farm implement bearings on the seat and mast for the guy wires to attach to were used so it could rotate.   My cost was maybe $10 and most of that went for the farm implement bearings since my kids had outgrown the high chair.  The whole assembly wasn't pretty --- but it worked.

So you have read my previous blogs about how I have moved into my new duplex apartment in Albion.  It's a two-bed, one-bath place with about 900 square feet and has a one-car garage.  The garage was my biggest draw to the place; I can keep my eBay inventory in there and not let my humble abode come to look like a warehouse.  Anyway, neither of the two bedrooms have a ceiling-mounted light fixture.  Flipping on the light switch instead send power to the top half of the wall outlets, into which you'd better have a lamp plugged into if you expect there to be light.  My Nelson Estates apartment had this feature, but only in the living room --- and I never used it.  I preferred to turn my lamps off and on by myself, thank you very many.  But here, I have no choice as there are no fixtures in the ceiling.

As I type this now at 1:40am on Sunday, April 1, 2012, I have an old 1960s photography light bar mounted on a tripod behind me to light up my desk.  That's because, like a dunce, I put my McGyver ceiling light in my bedroom.  That twin-bulb light bar is supposed to help illuminate my eBay wares for picture-taking purposes.  Anyway, this blog is to tell you how to put a light fixture where none existed before.

Obviously, I can't tear up the ceiling to mount the light fixture like it's supposed to mount.  So what I created is a temporary mounting that can be removed at a moment's notice.  While doing my weekly shopping at the Wal-Mart Superstore on Kendallville, I scored all but one of the ingredients for my McGyver ceiling light --- a ten-inch ceiling light fixture, a Rubbermaid stainless steel kitchen sink drainage grid, a package of five plant hooks and twenty feet of light-duty dog tie-out chain.  The only thing I forgot was an extension cord, but that's only because I already had one long enough to work.

I set out to start my little adventure by removing the $10.72 ceiling fixture from the box and looking over its mounting hardware.  It was determined that it would indeed mount to the $5.82 Rubbermaid drainage grid, and I did so.  The $1.07 package of five plant hooks was opened and the grid used to set the position of the hooks in the ceiling.  My cordless drill and a 1/8th-inch bit were used to drill four pilot holes in the ceiling so the self-tapping hooks could be screwed in more easily.  Then four chunks of the $6.86 dog tie-out chain were cut off the aforementioned twenty feet, with four links per chunk.  The female end of a previously-owned extension cord was lopped off, the wires stripped back and attached to the light fixture's wires.  The ends were soldered and wrapped well with electrical tape.

Next, I climbed atop my stepladder and placed the four chunks of tie-out chain on the hooks embedded in the ceiling.  They were looped around the drainage rack and also placed on the hooks.  This suspended my McGyver ceiling light  overhead.  The cord was swung in the general direction of the outlet it would eventually be plugged into.  Three $1.00 for a pack of 100 soda straws were twisted twice around the cord and pierced with an equal number of $3.72 for a pack of seventy push pins to hold the cord against the ceiling.  The three push pins pierced the three straws and hold them to the ceiling while the cord hangs suspended from the straws --- you knew that, but I thought I'd be specific.  Just in case.  Anyway, I climbed down, plugged the cord into the outlet and flipped the light switch.

Bingo!  There was light.  And it was good.  For $24.47, I now have a ceiling light in my bedroom where none had been before.

The push-pins-and-soda-straw trick was used a couple of days before to run my computer's Internet coax from one side of my library to the other.  That's why I didn't figure their cost into the previous paragraph's cost.  Anyway, I like to have my monitor in a corner to the left of the keyboard with my back to the door.  That means having my desk --- actually an eight-foot-ling cafeteria table bought at an auction --- along the west wall of what is normally the master bedroom.  The coax plug is on the east wall.  So I bought a 25-foot length of coax, went up the wall with it and across the ceiling to the other side.  That coax cable now hangs from the ceiling with five soda straws and five push pins.  There is about four feet of loose coax available so the modem and computer can be moved for dusting, maintenance or whatever.

Looking back, I suppose I could've used a plastic cutting board to mount the light fixture.  But it just so happened that I came across the drainage grid first while looking through the kitchen gadgets section of Wal-Mart.  Maybe the cutting board would've cost a buck or two less than the drainage grid.  Who knows?  All I care about is that it works.  Come next payday, I intend to make two more for my library.  One will mount directly over my desk and the other near the door for even light distribution.  Heaven certainly knows that I have more than enough leftover chain, pushpins and soda straws for that!

Cheers!

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