Strip Lighting

One of the things I dislike about the t@b is the lighting.  All three lights are at eye level when sitting down, so there is horrible glare when you are inside at nighttime.  Also, the light in the kitchen is mounted on the side, which makes it impossible to see what you were cooking because it throws a shadow in any sort of pot with high sides.  I actually need a flashlight to reheat stew.

LED strip lighting is pretty cheap and can be wired directly into the 12v system in the trailer.  So I removed the kitchen light, replaced it with a switch, and added two sets of lighting.  The first is in the kitchen; I put a strip going across the width of the overhead cabinets and tacked on some trim using finishing nails.

Now I have light coming from directly above and I can see what I am doing.  The stainless steel backdrop also reflects it out so it can be used as general lighting as well.

I added a second strip to the top of the window valence on the left side.  This provides indirect lighting that is bright enough to work with without the harsh glare of something mounted on the wall. The valence already had a lip and it is also above your head, so there was no need to add trim up there to hide the strip.

While I was fiddling with wiring, I also added a bluetooth sound bar. I wanted something built-in like the newer trailers have, but I only found some rather expensive ones that were a brand I never heard of so I didn't bother. But as luck would have it I found an Amazon Basics sound bar that (a) had wall mounting hardware and (b) took exactly 12v as input, which meant I could wire it straight in. All I needed to do was cut off the AC adapter block and attach the wires.  Note this is the sound bar model without the subwoofer, as that model took something like 15v.

I do regret where I mounted it.  I centered it in the valence, but I think it would have looked a lot better centered over the window instead.  But I'm not willing to make more holes in exposed woodwork to change it.

The wiring itself was rather simple.  I kept the original wiring for the light (red) and added more wiring (blue) to reach the overhead cabinets and the window valence after the new switches.

I wish I could get strip lights in the right hand side window valence, but there is no existing route to exploit to get it there.  But the two strip lights I have already are more than bright enough; I only use the remaining two lights over the bed if I need to get up in the middle of the night.