Part of the process of finishing up the insulation and paneling over the last set of big doors was wiring up some over-door lights, one over each set of big doors.

I do a LOT of work outside in front of the shop, whether cutting wood, grinding metal, welding, etc. and often I simply do not have enough light –or run out of light– without having external lights at the middle and far end of the shop (basically the big door areas).

I actually ran the electrical wiring months ago, but finally finished this up tonight.

As for the lights themselves, I wanted a way to cover up the junction boxes that the light bases are secured to. So I decided to cut some ovals from a scrap 2×10, with cutouts in the middle to hide the junction boxes embedded in each oval’s center.

Over the last couple of days, I painted a couple of coats of white paint on the decorative oval discs before mounting them around the J-boxes.

After getting the oval bases mounted and caulked with a final coat of paint, I then mounted the lights.

As an aside, the simple truth is that the original builder of my workshop didn’t build enough pitch into it, so with the rain being so intense as it’s been over the last few weeks it has overwhelmed the grommeted screw fasteners to the point that my ceiling insulation was, over time, soaking up water. I decided that I would have to treat literally each screw with added water-proofing, but in the mean time I simply covered a big section of the roof with a 9 mil thick tarp to keep this onslaught of rain at bay. Since the tarp went up it has eliminated any damp/wet shop ceiling insulation.

With the “tarp story” explained, here is some more pics of the new exterior over-door workshop lights.

Finally, here is a shot showing the lights in action. I can tell you that these lights will be a huge benefit in providing added visibility –and thus added capability– during a myriad of work tasks.

Again, I’m pressing forward to finish up the shop to get back on the plane, and I’m getting pretty darn close . . .