Our last project of 2018 was updating our broken and outdated lamp post. It’s been a few years since we added the garage and our light fixtures have been mismatched ever since so it was about time we fixed that. The project took us a little more than 1 day which was a little longer than we expected but that’s usually the case with home projects. Here’s a before pic of the old pole, broken pane facing the house of course.
First things first, make sure you don’t get electrocuted and remind your wife not to accidentally flip on the switch. #safetyfirst
Then you drink coffee and put on your game face to tear out the old post and dig a hole past the frost line. And don’t forget to set up all the tools needed to do phase 1 of the job.
Then it’s time to get to work. You can see the pile of concrete that secured the old post is pretty small, which explains why the lamp post became crooked over time. If someone wants to replace the post we installed they will have a MUCH larger pile. Mace used a hammer drill to break up the concrete so it was easier to get out. The hole had to be at least 30″ deep to get below the front line.
Next up it was time to investigate the electrical, phase 2 of the project. Unfortunately it never usually works out to be a straight forward swap out and the old wiring had some damage that needed to be addressed. This is where a lot of the extra time went so Mace would feel good about it being up to snuff.
Next up we dry fitted the new lamp post to determine what height we wanted the new post at. This was also important so we could to determine where we would drill the holes in the new post for the electrical wiring. The new fixture is taller than the old one and we decided to keep the lights about where they were before, roughly 64″ from the ground.
The manufactures pre-drilled hole didn’t line up with where our electrical wire came in (and we weren’t going to dig it down farther) so we drilled, filed, and taped out a new hole for the electrical wires.
We also wanted to add an outlet to the post so we could plug in Christmas lights or whatever else so we drilled out a hole for that too. Apparently posts can come with this already installed which I was unaware of and also unaware I should have been shopping for, so lesson learned. This hole needed to be quite a bit larger than the other one and we didn’t have the right drill bit, so we improvised and just drilled a bunch of smaller holes and then ripped out the pieces. You can see in the second picture everything is a little jagged looking but it worked and the outlet fit.
Here is a picture of everything put together at this point of the project. The electrical repairs I mentioned earlier we put inside of a conduit pipe to protect it. That way if anyone is digging in the future they won’t damage the wires. The wire shown coming out of the post is where the outlet will be.
Now on to phase 3, stabilizing and leveling up the post. We used steaks in the ground, ratchet straps, and a truck to make sure that everything was level before we poured the concrete. This way when we poured the fast setting concrete we wouldn’t have to worry about it getting knocked around and end up getting set crooked.
Always check one more time before you start (and take one more picture)… Dead nuts. He is very patient with me.
We taped off the post before the pour so the cement wouldn’t make a mess of it and it would be easy to clean up. Then we added water to the concrete, mixed it up (see I did some work here too during Jacob’s nap time), and then poured it in the cardboard soffit. We did 3 50lb. bags of fast setting concrete, probably over kill, and like I said before whoever wants to change this post in the future will be cursing us.
While the concrete was setting up Mace moved onto phase 4 and finished wiring up the post outlet and I cleaned up the tools and job site. Of course that had a minor hiccup when the manufactures screws broke when he was screwing it to the post and we had to search the house for replacement screws.
You can tell by the photos the sun had set so now we were working in the dark. Luckily Jacob decided to take a 2 hour nap so I was able to be an extra set of hands during this phase. We just had to wire up the fixture and then…
There was light!! Luckily no drama at this point and we just had to put the glass panes and top on for the night. With it being dark we left everything set up over night and then back filled the hole the next day.
And here’s the new lamp post in the light of day. She’s mighty pretty!
Mace convinced me to use LED candelabra bulbs in the fixture so we (aka HE) will never need to change them like he would with incandescent bulbs. I was hesitant because I don’t care for the yellow filament that you can see when they’re off but less work and more energy efficiency in the long run wins out. After seeing the LED light bulbs installed, the yellow filament doesn’t bother me that much. If it was inside the house it would be a different story but outside you aren’t staring at the light when its off very much.
Here’s a before and after of the lamp posts that shows how it looks with the rest of the house. Such an improvement! It was a decent amount of work for a seemingly small change but it really helps make the front of our house feel more updated. I still love the look of these fixtures and would totally use them again. As a side note, the fixtures we installed on the garage and deck have held up great after 3 1/2 years and show no signs of wear or sun damage (our deck gets 10+ hours of direct full sun).
Before
After
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