The Home Crowd

Sometimes, I sit here and think “Ya know, I’d spend more time under the bed if not for the fact that it’s so hard to read any sort of books or magazines under there…”

Actually this image and the rest of the images of various furniture backlit by LED lighting here at Lifehacker are kind of enticing. If nothing else but for the fact that tomorrow I could drop by target or any other various electronic store and pick up a LED rope light strand. I spotted this one at amazon for about 60 bucks for 50 feet.

The smaller projects shown in the article use much less and manage to ‘pimp’ their furniture with roughly 20 linear feet of LED rope lights.

“Why don’t more people put lights under their beds?” you ask?  Well, fires quite simply.  Trying to light up the underside of your bed with traditional incandescent lights can be quite hot and dangerous when near combustibles.  And if you’re hooking up Fluorescent tube lights under your bed or desk, then you’re up for the hall of fame of geekdom.  LED lights are not nearly as hot, but instead warm to the touch, and while these may resemble your Christmas light knot-ball in the garage, they’re actually more dependable and much more energy efficient.

Unsightly speaker wires are just expected for those in apartments but it’s understood as it’s a temporary home. But FlatWire has another option for those tenants/homeowners looking to clean up the mess of wires without punch holes in your walls. And perhaps even that’s not an option sometimes. Perhaps you have shared walls between condo units you don’t wanna pierce, wall cavities full of spray foam insulation, or as in the case of many high rise apartments, a concrete wall.

(During Installation)

(After FlatWire is applied to walls, finished, and repainted over)

But what about folding the wires 90 degrees, just fold it upon itself. My big concern about this would be the heat generated by electrical cables as it is, but it seems to be directed at speakers, and low-voltage lighting, not providing the juice to that 500 watt home theater receiver, so I can’t imagine the paint or wallpaper bubbling itself off the wall. Seems like this may be useful for some of us, but just make sure you remember where you ran the FlatWire, so you don’t go and drive a nail through it years later while hanging a painting.

You can order it off their site, but it’s a little steep. 37$ for 25 feet of the speaker wire, or a home theater package for 250, plus their special adhesive, tape, labor (mudding, sanding, repainting or wallpapering if you choose)

Or you could just just run a wire, and paint over that. Sounds terrible, but you know you’ve seen it done before…

FlatWire (via Lifehacker)

Lifehacker also has a great post of “10 ways to get cables under control”, a how-to guide to keeping those cables under control and out of sight.