Kitchen Spot Enclosure Removal

[chunkywizard]

Hi there,

I have these useless spots in my kitchen. the bulbs are held in by an inner ring which you have to rotate to allow the bulb to drop out. Unfortunately the ring seems to be covered in a plastic film and on some of the spots this has melted from the heat of the spots fusing the ring in place so you cannot get the bulbs out. So I am after a method to free these rings to replace the bulbs, or, I want to replace the enclosures to something easier to change (the ones with the metal clips?) in which case I am after a method to remove the whole enclosure. The enclosures are held in place by the sprung arm method and I can lower them by about 2cm with the bulbs in place but I am not sure of how I can fold in/back the arms to allow the enclosure to be removed.

Anyone any ideas? I have uploaded 2 pics to my images showing the fitting in place and one removed (that luckily wasn't stuck like most of them) //www.diynot.com/network/chunkywizard/albums/

CW

 

[ban-all-sheds]

It seems so obvious that you must have tried, but can't you cut through the plastic (which was there to protect the finish, and should have been removed on installation) with a scalpel?

I have these useless spots in my kitchen.

Useless?

Surely not....

You'd be amazed at the number of people posting here for advice on how many/what sort because they want to put them into a ceiling not already ravaged, and who just aren't interested in being told that they are useless.

You have my sympathy that the previous owner was one of them.

How many are there? Could you bite the bullet and remove them?

You can still have unobtrusive recessed lighting, but you need a larger size for it to be any good.

Something like this works well, and you need fewer of them:



I don't know how many holes you'd have to fill, nor how much of dab hand you are at that sort of thing, but it might be worth thinking about rather than just rearranging the deck chairs...

 

[chunkywizard]

Hi there,

thanks for coming back. You are right, they are not useless, they worked well for 3 years, but now with blown bulbs they are useless! I have tried a scapel, but maybe not hard enough. The heat might have warped the metal also, but I'll keep on trying.

I have thought to replace the whole enclosure, but then, what's the best way to remove the old one? Do I have to cut a notch out of the plaster board to allow the sprung clips to pass through or is there a good way of retracting the springs to come back through the existing hole?

CW