Last year Jay started to convert our lighting in the basement to LED strip lighting.

At the time he used the old florescent fixtures and attached the LED strips directly to them. After he ran out of fixtures he started placing them on plywood. This is a simple project that almost anybody can do. Here’s what you need:

6″ x 48″ piece of OSB

12v 2A wall wart

16′ Daylight White LEDs

Double wire to be used as jumpers

Almost all of the LEDs and wall arts Jay has purchased has been through Amazon.

In one end of the OSB drill two holes so that you can anchor the plug end of the LED strip. This is the end that will connect to the wall wart.

Lay out four lines of LEDs. Yes, you can cut them as they are typically on some kind of plastic tape.

Make sure that when you’re laying out the strips you have all of the ‘+’s and ‘-‘s going the same way. In the example above you can see that on both strips the ‘+’ is on the right and the ‘-‘ is on the left.

Use thin CA to anchor spots that lift.

Cut 2 pieces of double wire in 2″ lengths.

Cut one piece of double wire in a 3″ length.

Strip and tin the ends of the wires.

Solder the wires to the pads in parallel.

Test with a 12v power supply. If the LED’s don’t light up check to make sure you have the wire ends soldered to the correct pads.

Install the board using 1 1/4″ deck screws into the floor joists.

Plug in and enjoy!