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jon_h_gw

Relocating or removing a recessed light

jon-h
11 years ago

In my home, I have some recessed lights right in front of my kitchen wall cabinets, directly over the kitchen counter.

All of the wall cabinets are of the shallow variety (~12.5). The recessed lights are about 6 inches in front of the face of the cabinet.

I've replaced one base cabinet and wall cabinet with a single, tall, deep (~24") pantry cabinet for additional storage. Unfortunatley, the location of this cabinet is partially under one of the recessed cans. Most of the light from this one recessed can hits the top of this cabinet, the top of which sits about 3-4 inches below the ceiling.

I'd like to either relocate or remove this recessed light altogether. If I relocate, I'd like to move it around a foot. I imagine doing so would require cutting out a big section of drywall from my ceiling, moving the light, rewiring, and re-drywalling and painting. The problem here is running new wire from the switch to the can, since extending the wire via wire nuts is probably the wrong way of doing things. Of course, if there is a foot or so of slack wire, that would be great, but somehow I doubt there is.

The easier option I'm considering is unscrewing the light bulb, finding a cover plate for it, and leaving everything else as is. Is doing something like this okay from a code and safety standpoint?

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