I am interested in installing landscape lighting in both my front and backyard. The back yard project will come after finishing the front. For the front yard, I had planned on installing a VOLT 300W 12V multi-tap transformer. I do not have an exterior GFI on the front of the house.

The previous owner had lighting they removed before I purchased. They left the existing electrical wire and so I saw that they had installed the transformer inside the garage. This is a convenient location, they then passed the 12v, 12ga wire through the wall to all the lights.

This was my plan until finding this forum. I now see that a safe install would be more complicated than this. Specifically the transformer I'm considering does not appear rated as an indoor/outdoor transformer. The only indoor/outdoor ones I've seen are closer to $500?

Is the indoor/outdoor transformer the simplest install? My understanding is that I would pass romex through the wall to an outdoor junction box to join it with the landscape wire? Is it easy to modify an existing outdoor outlet to be GFI compliant and then simply plug into that? Any other suggestions?