Grow Light Installed

One part of the plan for the shelves in the dining room was to install a grow light so I could start seeds for my garden. I looked on the Internet for plans and after bypassing all the marijuana growing sites, I found that I could avoid spending $60.00+ for a whole set up by buying a shop light and installing it myself.

I bought the shop light when I bought the rest of the supplies for the shelves, but when I went to install it, I found that it was not a shop light with a cord and a plug attached--which was the only way I'd ever seen shop lights--but instead was a mess of wires I was supposed to connect to something. Because I had no idea what to do, I put the whole thing away for a few weeks.

This weekend, I didn't have youth group so I took the extra time and walked over to Lowe's to try and figure out the situation. I like arriving at big box home improvement places late in the evening or early in the mornings, especially on weekends. The employees are much more willing to help. I found the shop light with cord I thought I was buying and it was twice as much for less light. So I went to customer service and they paged the lighting guy. He was very nice and helpful and I'm sorry I can't remember his name.

I explained my situation to him and he opened up the box of the kind of light I bought so he could figure out what was going on. It turned out that I needed to buy a cord (for $6.00) and just wire everything together. He even gave me the cap things I needed to put on top of the wires because he didn't think I should have to buy 100 of them. I was excited that for only six more dollars I was on my way again.
I walked home and wired everything together. The light went on and I wasn't electrocuted! I was pretty excited.

The next problem came with trying to mount the light. I knew I had "eye" screws to screw into the shelf, and S-hooks were going to hook into that, but how was I going to get the S-hooks to attach to the light? I couldn't just screw the light into the shelf, because the whole point of a grow light is that I can adjust it to different heights.

The answer turned out to be leftover anchors. I screwed an eye-screw into one, and then slipped the eye through the hole in the roof of the light. The S-hook then hooked into the eye. I felt very smart. This is why I like home improvement projects.
Once I got those things squared away, the whole thing came together quickly. I relocated Matt's poor, waterlogged cactus under the grow light. Incidentally, I chose the light I did based on the very helpful experiment of Wayne Schmidt. He planted seeds under five different fluorescent lights plus sunlight. If you scroll down on his page, you can see the winner, which was the brand I bought. This is why I love the Internet. Wayne got to do his experiment, I got to see his results and make a decision. All for the cost of a computer and Internet connection.
One thing that needs finishing is a better way to get the cord out of the way. I have a plan of installing some hooks, but right now it is wrapped around the s-hooks.
When I start seedlings, I can lower the grow light to two inches above the plants. That supposedly helps them germinate.
So now I have a handy grow light that cost me about $30.00, instead of $60.00 dollars.

It turned out, though, that I skipped the first rule in home improvement projects which is "make sure none of your relatives has something you can use". It turns out that my mom has two grow lights. I had no idea she did, and didn't think to ask. But if I had known that, I wouldn't have been able to connect a power cord to a light and make it work, so maybe it was worth it after all.

Full picture of the shelves with things on them coming soon.