NO, you're not alone, took us 2 evenings (about 4 1/2 hrs in all) to do ours. And then I was in charge of writing down exactly what we needed for each room, closet, hallway, basement, exterior and whatever other place we needed to put a fixture. I created a spreadsheet for each room and then listed all our choices on it so when we went to the lighting store Saturday we were pretty much organized although, guess what, we're over the budget on that too since all the recessed lighting had to be figured in as well.

Maybe I am just too used to producing drawings that are accurately bid prior to construction, but it just seems odd that you do walkthroughs during construction to determine outlet quantities, lighting types, etc. How do you know how much the electrical portion will cost prior to construction?

On that note, plan for everything possible. Think about even the tiny details, such as christmas decor. Do you use lights? place outlets on exterior columns. Place some outlets in the soffits, etc. Think about furniture arrangement and bed placements. Will you have end tables in the middle of the room where you want to place a lamp on? Consider a floor box. list goes on. it can be overwhelming for the new comer to electrical. A maze of yellow and white wires everywhere, boxes everywhere that could be anything. I find it quite fascinating to be honest. The artery and vein system of your house!

Lxerarc mentioned to take note of bed placements. This reminded me of a suggestion that someone gave to to place a light switch near the bed for the bedroom overhead lights.

I hate the cans over our bed. Never use them and have had nightmares about spiders. lol I regret being pressured to install a ton of cans. Never use most of them except in hallways, but there they ARE, holes in my ceilings!

Mistake to mount cans in the slopes of a cathedral. Should have had up-lights to 'wash' the slopes.

Somehow the under-cabinet kitchen lights got left off our plans after some other revisions. Big hassle to re-fit that later.

I wish I'd had an outlet near the stairs so that I could decorate there at Christmas.

Do you have security lights? Want to turn them on from your MBR?

Mskitchen, I have a spreadsheet, too. I used the spreadsheet to make the maps of lighting on my floor plans (plus assistance from a lighting designer). I can't imagine having to go back a 2nd day to do more!

Lzerarc, we're working with allowances for the fixtures. But the electrician went through the house before we got there and marked what was included in our contract for the wiring. And he was showing us where standard/code outlets were going in case we needed to add more. It was much easier to see it in real life than on paper. So we did have everything included in the bid as per code, basically.

We did consider furniture placement (had that mapped out when we did the house plans!) and decorating.

Kymike1, that's a good idea to have a switch for the overhead lights! However, in our bedrooms we'll have ceiling fans (with or without light kits) that have remote controls. We can then mount the remote in a cradle near the bed for both fan and light control!

Chisue, we completely forgot pendants and electrical outlet discussions on our island. I think that was one of the last areas we were looking at and we were so hot and tired we were rushing. I've gone back to the builder and asked about both of those things. And yes, we have security lights and the electrician did suggest putting a light switch in our MBR, which we thought was a brilliant idea!!

Thanks for the support, everyone. :)

Lzerarc, we also have an allowance for the lighting fixtures. I have to agree with imacurvygirl, easier to see in real life than on the plans such as the recessed lighting which was indicated on the plans and meant nothing to me. Most of the the outlets had already been installed but we had the option of moving whatever we wanted placed elsewhere. And I did bring up the fact of the floor in the great room and was told that we could do that at a later date.