Just wanted to report back success here. I did order an EL1499ICA online, although what was shipped was an EL1499ICA-L, noted only on the mfr site as an economy version - but looked dimensionally similar to the original specs. I scheduled to have the electrician do it, less about the electrical than worrying about traversing 20' of attic and accidentally stepping through the ceiling drywall somewhere. Was very simple 10 minutes for the electrician to swap out the entire housing. Before he came, I did look at the housing and there is no way to remove the rectangular sealed box to just replace the transformer - it's basically riveted shut. He was the original electrician from the remodel - said 1 in a 100 of these fails, no good reason... I asked about what happens if one of the downstairs transformers fails, given no attic. He did confirm he could also access from the can itself via the ceiling, as brickeyee said, but it just takes more time and effort that way. I did see that removing three screws allows the can to drop out, although it did seem quite a pain to try to unscrew the old transformer from the housing blind (when your hand and screwdriver have reached into the opening). Would be a very challenging DIY attempt. Replacement housing works great, and learned a few things as a general DIY-er. Thanks, esp brickeyee, for the advice.

does that 1000$ included mudding, taping, priming and painting and or ceiling texture? If so, then I would pay 1000$ to get that done. It seems reasonable. 8 lights for 500$, also does this include the lights themselves or just the labour and wiring? To do this yourself, depending on your experience could be quite time consuming and could be a major inconvenience, especially in the last two months of your pregnancy. all told 1500$ for all material and labour is not bad.

In both fixtures there is a black, white, and green and then there is a red wire that runs between the 2 original light fixtures themselves. The light fixtures are the old fixtures that will hold just one bulb and they have screws attached to the back that you attach the wires to. We were going to replace the 2 fixtures with the new ones and then run additional lights from there. We were going to use the same cables and just run new cables to the additional lights. Someone told me that we can leave the 2 original fixtures there and just add new wire to one of the lights and wire in the new light doing a "daisy chain" but my husband has now detached all the wires and has no idea how to even attach the two lights back to the way they were originally. Does the red wire normally attach with the black or the white wire?

Sorry I did not watch the electrician do this, but we covered up several 6” recessed lights from the 1980s with either flush mount large enough to cover the holes, and some replaced with pendants or semi-flush. It didn’t take the electrician long & was a non-issue supporting the new fixture and was not an unusual request for them. I had some ”conversion kits” for recessed-to-surface mt on hand just in case, the electrician only used one where the new pendant fixture was smaller than the gaping 6” hole and it avoided drywall patching.