How to Mount a Ceiling Light if a Joist Is in the Way

Trace around a 6-inch, round pancake electrical box on the ceiling. To remove the drywall from the ceiling, carefully cut along the trace line with a rotary saw equipped with a drywall blade.

Position the pancake box in the hole you cut in the drywall and against the joist. Drive 1-inch wood screws through the screw holes in the pancake box and into the wood joist. The pancake box will sit flush with the drywall since they are both 3/4-inch thick.

Place a screwdriver against one of the round, knockout slugs inside the pancake box. Hit the handle of the screwdriver with a hammer to push the knockout slug from the pancake box. This provides you with an opening to thread the electrical cable through the back of the box.

Snap a plastic hit-lock connector into the knockout. The hit-lock connector allows you to secure the electrical cable in the pancake box without using screws or locknuts.

Access the attic and pull a length of 12-2 nonmetallic electrical cable from your power source location to the ceiling light location. Push the end of the cable though the hit-lock connector you snapped into the pancake box.

Rip the end of the cable sheath off the wires you inserted through the hit-lock connector using cable rippers. Strip about 3/4 inch of the insulation off the ends of the black and the white wire using wire strippers.

Remove the screws attached to the mounting ears on the pancake box. Attach the mounting strap supplied with your ceiling lighting fixture’s mounting hardware to the pancake box using the screws you removed from the pancake box.

Connect the black wire from your ceiling fixture to the black wire from the pancake box by twisting a connector onto the two wires. Join the white wire from the pancake box to the white wire from your ceiling fixture with another wire connector.

Find the midpoint of the ceiling fixture’s bare copper ground wire. Wrap the bare wire around the green ground screw on the mounting strap at the wire’s midpoint. Connect the loose end of the fixture’s ground wire to the bare copper wire from the pancake box with another wire connector.

Thread the light’s mounting screws through the screw holes in the canopy and attach the screws to the mounting strap attached to the pancake box. Insert the light bulbs into the sockets and attach the glass shade to the ceiling fixture.