Hiding Wires

Tying Up Loose Ends......

You May remember, Dear Readers, that it was AGES ago that I began to try to complete the wiring for the Lights in The Folly! The difficulty is that this kit has Very Thin walls! There is no room to bury the wires in channels cut into the walls themselves, and so I am having to be sort of Inventive with ways to conceal the wires and still end up with lights where they would be most practical and realistic! I have decided that this is a step that has been delayed long enough, as all the rest of the decorating depends on the lights being in place. There are still several lights I have not decided where they will go.... particularly in the kitchen.... but I have decided to at least Finish the ones that I do have in place!
For the Upstairs bedroom I have made a very Bohemian Style ceiling fixture out of a jewelry piece... a Silver bangle from India.... and you can see (in the picture above) it is attached in the topmost peak of the roof. I ran the wire across the wall inside the peak and will hide it inside the roof edge over the stairway....

where you can see it here still dangling loosely....

It is really difficult to get pictures of this... 

so you will just have to use your imaginations....

Eventually it will run in a channel down the edge of the kitchen wall..... 

I haven't finished this yet!

But I did hide most of the wires for the Sconce in the Book Nook.....

I forgot to take pictures of the process.... 

but the wires run down under the decorative wood trim below the light.... 

and come under the window beneath the baseboard trim. 

See... you can't see the wires! 

They will also get hidden in a channel along the kitchen wall... 

and so reach the plug strip in the cellar below the house!

For the rest of the upstairs lights, 

the candle in the bedroom nook, and the wires for the Porch light, 

I have run them through the wall into the bathroom......

Where I have had to hide them under the baseboards running around the bathroom walls......

Here you can see the wires where they come through the wall....

And here the baseboard on the right side is in place,

 and I have started the process of trying to glue the wires in place neatly enough that they can eventually be covered by the baseboard.... 

which I have carved out on the back side to accommodate the thickness of the wires....

I glued them one wire at a time... one section at a time.... 

taping them in place until the glue dried...

And even this way the thickness of the wires is such that I will have to gouge more out of the back of the baseboard for it to really fit snugly.....

I will also add a section of baseboard over the wires at the far end.... 

although with the sink and tub in place they are hardly visible!

The overhead light in this room (when I decide what sort of light is needed...) 

will run down the roof panel the same way the Bedroom light does....

But already it is looking So Much more organized!

And while I was tying up loose ends.... 

I decided that the time had come to bury the wires on the Tree House too! 

I probably haven't shown you what a terrible mess the wires were on the back side of the Tree House...!

Keep in mind that the Tree House is run on battery powered LED's which means they have polarity and so it is very important to keep the red wires and black wires separate! If they touch... they blow the bulb... and I am NOT replacing any of the lights in the Tree House! So I have been treating them VERY Carefully while I try to figure out just How and Where I am burying their connections!!! These kits from Evan Designs are Wonderful and very easy to use... and it says you can join up to ten LED's on one battery. I have used nine LED's so far in the first three rooms of the Tree House... so I decided it is time to fix this circuit grouping in place. The lights for the next rooms will go together on another battery and it will need to be kept separated from this first circuit so no wires can get mixed up in the wrong circuit.!

I started by deciding that the red wires and black wires needed to all meet up at the base of the tree in two separate spots.....

Of course, it is really difficult to see these clearly...... 

but I had to shorten the wires that were close to the base, 

but still leave enough length to manipulate them and twist ends together securely.... 

And because the wires from the higher rooms would not reach the base junction spots... 

I decided to join them together higher up and run single wire extensions down to the base joins...... 

Here you can see the upper wires joined together before I added the extension wires....

And I have carefully covered all the junctions with shrink tubing..... 

which you can see here below before the shrinking.....

And here it is  with the wires all joined..... 

I have taped them in place with masking tape 

which will all be covered with more paper mache when the outer layer of the Tree is built.....

And now for the Really big question.... do the lights Work...???

YES!!! They do!!!

All neatly connected to One battery pack.... 

with long lead wires so I can adjust them later...!

And The Folly Too....

The wires have been covered with a piece of cardboard to make the surface of the bed nook.... and in the corner where they go through the wall they are painted brown to camouflage them! There is an outlet in that corner too in case a table lamp is needed as well....

And when the lights are on....

It's starting to look ready to finish decorating .....

I've made some real progress.... 

But there is still a ways to go with hiding all the wires!

Just a Little Tying up loose ends....!