I get that you both thought maybe I was soldering my own strips raw but the DIY in the title is about setting up your own strips, not just buying a bunch of LIFX or Hue strips.
BTW: You actually did do nothing more than buying a bunch of strips, I don't see a big technical difference between hue and chinese strips + a chinese hue-bridge except for the soldering (but afaik they also offer connectors for solderless application...). So you might change the title to: "setting up a chineses hue replacement for cheap with soldering" (though I would expect pictures of your soldering then...
You'll get there! :)