Before gluing in the bar shelves I built, I wanted to add lights. The bar needs to be removable from the roombox (it would be much too hard to add accessories if it were fixed in place), so this means the lights need to plug in to an outlet. And of course I didn’t want the outlet to be visible.
In order to add an outlet behind the bar, I needed to hack a hole in the side of the bar. This creates a recess for the outlet and plug to fit into, so the bar can sit flush against the wall. Geoff helped with the power tools. (By “helped” I mean he did it for me!)
The back and side of the bar have shelves underneath, but the front area has non-opening cabinet doors. This means there’s a hollow area behind the fake cabinet that can be drilled into. We started by marking where we believed the hollow area to be, based on the height of the floor, thickness of the front piece of wood, and height and depth of the cabinet. Then we drew a rectangle slightly larger than the socket, and Geoff drilled a small hole to see what was behind it.
Satisfied that we weren’t going to destroy the bar by doing this, he drilled a larger hole.
This hole was big enough to fit the jigsaw blade into, so he used that to roughly cut out the rectangle.
Finally he cleaned up the edges with the drum sander attachment on the Dremel.
The posts that the lights will be mounted on are 7/16″ wide. I looked high and low for 1:12 sconces and literally every one I found had a 1/2″ base. I didn’t want the base to be hanging off the edges of the posts — in fact, I thought they’d look best if they were a bit smaller than the posts. I was pondering this for a ridiculously long time before I realized I should use half scale lights, which only have a 1/4″ base.
These are Houseworks globe sconces. The first step was to plug an outlet into the end of the tapewire and test the lights. They work! Considering my track record with electricity, this is something to celebrate.
Emily is a freelance writer, miniaturist, and adventure game enthusiast.
