Let there be light....almost

With my beams sanded to perfection near perfection, the next step was to find the solution to this room's overhead lighting.  Generally speaking, this is a straight forward proposition when designing with standard construction methodologies...namely, when a ceiling is made of sheet rock or dropped panels.  With such ceilings, wiring is easily concealed between the finish material and the overlying ceiling joists.  Here is what I am talking about:

 

As shown above, the recessed can lighting and requisite wiring are concealed within the ceiling joists. Once the dry wall is fastened to the joists, viola:

Adios wires and unsightly lighting hardware.  Unfortunately, when your ceiling decking is doubling as the floor above, concealing wiring gets considerably trickier. To jog your memory, here is an elevation of the room which illustrates how the ceiling decking doubles as the floor in the exercise area above:

From below, the ceiling will look similar to this:

Hmmm, where to hide the wires?

My solution turned out to be fairly simple:  conceal the wiring within the beam and mount track lighting on the long face of the beam.  To be sure this would work, I practiced on a small section of timber I had:

Using a plunge router, I created a groove along the top of the beam to receive the 14/2 electrical wire that will supply each set of track lights.

With the groove created I then tested the wire's fit...

Lllllllllllllllike a Ga-love!

The next step was to create a channel between the groove and the long face of of the beam where the track lighting will be mounted...this was easily achieved with an extra long 3/8 inch drill bit:

Once in place, the wire will be covered up by the decking that will be applied above it...and there you have it...my solution for concealing the wiring.  With my test timber looking successful, I proceeded to wire the actual room:

As you can see above, the power supply arises from the stud wall, enters the long face of the beam, and travels down the groove to the eventual location of the track lighting (see next image):

Above is the location where the track lighting will be mounted.  Below is a shot of the entire room after finishing the ceiling's wiring.

Red arrows show entry points into each beam. 

In total, there will be five sets of track lights overhead.  Each track will contain 4 individual lights.

Disclaimer:  I have no clue how to design a lighting plan for a room.  That said, it seems pretty straight forward....I just thought about where in the room I wanted direct light (like over the Foosball table or book shelf) and where I wanted indirect light (such as over the TV).  I also gave some consideration to where the lighting hardware would be the least conspicuous as one entered the door.  As you may recall from my previous electrical plan, I settled on the following scheme:

Right or wrong, this is how the lighting is going to end up...its too late now to change it.  So if anyone has some critiques on this aspect of my design, I'll kindly ask you to obey Matt Foley and...

The only thing I may still add are some wall sconces for some up-lighting to highlight the ceiling (after all, it might be nice to actually see the beams I spent over 70 hrs sanding).

So where are the photos of the installed track lighting you ask?  Slow down there tiger, I need to apply the tongue oil finish to each beam before I mount the lighting kits...hence, the "almost."