Lights & Registers

Sounds exciting, right?  Ok, maybe not that exciting but I'll tell you what is exciting...we finished painting the living room and kitchen ceilings this past weekend!  There are two more (tedious) things left to do on the old to-do list and then...well, then we just make another to-do list with more stuff on it like deep clean the couch, hang stuff on the walls, and recover the chairs...but cheer with us because the big stuff is almost DONE!

In honor of the ceilings being painted and finally done (because that was a j.o.b.), let's talk about two things on it that make quite the difference - our new lights and our *new* ceilings registers.

Lights first.  When we bought this house, there was a big fan in the middle of the living room.  

Not only was it old and ugly (although it did have caning embedded in the blades and that is making a comeback...), but it hung so low we had to walk around it if we were carrying anything that rose above our own heads (like a child, for instance), lest the thing we were carrying knock into the glass covers on the light bulbs.  Within days of closing on the house, Anthony had it down.  Unfortunately, that fan was the only light source in the room though so we knew we'd eventually have to put in lights.  Well, eventually came a few months ago and we decided on staggering some recessed lights throughout the room.  Anthony knows electrical but we have a friend who is an electrician and knows way more than Anthony, so we paid him to come put in some lights for us.  We found out from him that, because of the way our joists run in comparison to the beams in the room, we wouldn't be able to put in traditional recessed lights.  There was only a moment of that let-down/what-are-we-going-to-do-we-don't-want-bulky-lights-in-here feeling though because our friend showed up with these LED lights* and we had ourselves a solved problemo.  I've never been one to get super excited about can lights but these, they were/are exciting.  Not only are they going to last us a very long time (thanks LED) but they're super slim so you can put them in places the bigger can lights can't venture.

  

Oh, and they have three Kelvin settings - so you can set them to warmer light all the way to cooler light with the flick of a switch.  Cool, right?  ;)  Awesome, I knew I wasn't the only one to get a kick out of these things.

We went back and forth with how many we should install but we ended up going with four lights - two in between the second and fourth spaces between beams - and they are just perfecto.  Plus, we had them installed on a dimmer switch so they can be dimmed.  It feels so fancy.  We also had our friend do the wiring in the attic for us to install two more of the same recessed lights in a smaller size over the peninsula in the kitchen.  With the vent hood there, pendants seemed like they'd be too much so these are the perfect solution.

Lights.  Check.  Onto the vents...which sounds way less exciting but they come with a tutorial so hold onto your horses... 

One Room Challenge–Week 3

Hey hey!  It’s week T H R E E of the
and over here, things are looking UP!!  No really, they are.  I got all of the upper cabinets painted this week and, oh my, it is CRAZY how much more light bounces through what I already thought was a fairly bright kitchen!

Check this out:

And then take a look at the same area pre-move:
The Almighty said it best with “Let there be light!”  Have you ever gone white in the kitchen (or any room really) and experienced the added light?  It’s great, right? 

I’ve written a few posts on how I paint cabinets in the past and time around the paint can wasn’t much different in the way of technique but I did use a new-to-us paint than I have in the past and got a little smarter as far as set-up goes.

Distressed Chandelier Diy

When we moved into our second house, one of the first things we replaced (if not the very first thing) was the chandelier in the dining nook.

Before we moved in.

The existing one wasn’t an electrical light but a candelabra-type thing and, as romantic as daily candlelit dinners sounded, we prefered the 21st century and a little light if we needed to wander into the kitchen at midnight.  Thankfully and in line with our hopes, there was electrical running to the box from which the candelabra hung so we grabbed a brushed nickel, $70 chandelier online, said “let there be light”, and whoop, there it was. 

We didn’t put much thought into its style at the time because we just desperately wanted something electrical, something that jived with the metals in the kitchen, and something that wouldn’t break the bank so, later down the road, I started dreaming of something prettier.

Cheap Change

Let’s play ‘spot the difference’, shall we?  What’s changed from this picture:

to this picture?
I mean, they’re not exactly a reflection of each other anymore.  One is the fairest (or fairer) one of all.  A mirror image they are not.  Ok.  I’ll stop.  You get it, you had it before I even started up with my ridiculousness. 

I painted the mirrors.  We ditched the dark, dusty rose for lighter and brighter white with a gold touch.  (And yes, in case you noticed this too, I spray painted the light fixtures quick-like.)

Here’s how:

Raise the Living

I’ve been trying to add more plants to our house…I’ve probably mentioned that before.  Luckily, they melt right in as easy decor so you really can’t go wrong with placement or type or anything like that.  I don’t know if it’s just in the past few years or if it’s always been this way and I’ve just never noticed, but I don’t think there’s a picture in any popular home decor mag or blog these days that doesn’t have a plant in it.  Aka, it’s super popular to have plants growing in your casa in the twenty teens.  But, that’s not the main reason why I’m sneaking them in to our house.  Anthony, who has always been against plants in the house (because he thinks they attract bugs…is he right?  idk) all of a sudden changed his mind when he read an article about how they filter and clean the air in your home.  I love the natural look plants bring to a space so you can bet your booty I grabbed a few to bring home as quick as I could after his change of heart.  Certain plants clean your air more than others so I’ve been trying to be very intentional about the plants I buy – I really only want those that clean the air the most.  The big Peace Lily we have is one of those plants.  In the past few months, it’s been playing musical room, going from the kitchen to the laundry room and now to our bedroom – all rooms that get a good amount of natural light.  I think it’s parked in our room for good though and I’m popping in today to show you exactly what it’s parked in.

Several months ago, I came across a couple of big planters at Goodwill.  You could tell they were pretty old and had been well loved by the plants that had once inhabited them but, well, they were stuck together.  Like, one was nestled tightly and seemingly-permanently into the other.  But, they were both marked at $1.99.  I didn’t feel like paying for two planters (even if they were cheap) if I coudn’t get them apart though.  So, I pulled and wiggled and wiggled and pulled and even had a strong male employee try for me but the planters looked like they were stuck for good.  Thankfully, Goodwill let me pay for one even though I got two, since we both figured I’d have to break one to end up with one.  And then, I got home and my amazing, incredible, fantastic, what-a-guy husband separated the two planters without breakage!  Huzzah! 

You can kind of see one of the planters in this Instagram shot and here is the other:   

This is after I cleaned it – it had some sort of grainy film on it that I had to painstakingly scrub off – but before I used up some old spray paint to liven it up a little.  I thought I took pictures of the process but they are nowhere to be found.  Basically, I painted everything but that little indented part on the bottom navy blue (Krylon), taped off the bottom of that big top part, and then painted that indented part on the bottom gold (Rust Oleum).  You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

Trophy (Painting) Wife

Last week, I finally got around to throwing up a collage wall and making a lamp out of string lights in Sebastian’s room.  If you missed that post, go check it out.

A few of the things up on that wall are some trophies from Anthony’s years past – Little League baseball years past.  I asked him a few years ago if he’d allow me to spray paint them and I got a shocked face and a stern, are-you-crazy, “no”.  Then I tried again last week and, maybe since all these guys have been doing is chilling in Sebastian’s closet, I got a “sure”.  So, I took that affirmative and ran with it…straight outside…with a few cans of spray paint.

Have you a few old trophies laying around?  Maybe you’ve passed some by at your local thrift store?  Well, if so, here’s how to make them as exciting today as they once were.

Trophies are put together really simply.

Basically, they’re a bunch of pieces and parts stacked on top of eachother with a long, threaded rod down the middle and that rod is secured at the bottom with a nut.

Unscrew that nut and everything will just slide right off.

The super cool thing about Anthony’s trophies is that each base is marble, carrerra marble to be exact.  I know so because a tiny sticker on the back of each told me so.  So fancy, right?  Well, there’s no way I’m going to paint something that isn’t ugly in the first place.  So, I grabbed all the plastic to be painted and left the marble as-is.

I gave all of the pieces a good washing with some dish soap and a toothbrush before I painted them.  They were a tad dusty from being stored so long.  After they were dry, I took them outside and laid them all out on a big piece of posterboard that was headed for the trash.


Then I gave each piece a coat of spray primer.  Plastic tends to be pretty finicky when it comes to holding paint (ahem), so priming it first ups the chances of it really sticking.

I painted one side of each piece, let that side dry, and then turned everything over to paint the other side.

Two of the trophies I left just primed – the gray and white.  I wasn’t sure what color I wanted to go and the only actual color I have in my spray paint stash right now is yellow.

Once everything was nice and dry, I put the trophies back together the same way I took them apart – by stacking them in order over the rod and securing it all by putting that nut back on at the base.  Except, in putting them back together, I turned the marble bases around backwards so that the metal plate parts with all of the writing were facing the back and the fronts were just plain marble.  See?

(So I was thinking while I was putting these things back together, about how awesome it would be to grab a few marble-laden trophies from a thrift store, take them apart to remove the marble, and stack the marble pieces all together to make a lamp base.  You could put all the big pieces at the bottom and small at the top or you could stagger them so they’re all different.  Either way, it be a really cool and cheap way to get a marble lamp!  :D  )

Had I a longer shelf, I probably would’ve painted more trophies and maybe that’ll eventually happen anyway.  Until then though, I really love how these turned out.  It’s fun when you can redo and repurpose something but even more fun and special when it’s something of sentimental value that probably wouldn’t have been used much less displayed anyway.  :)


All thanks and gratitude to my trophy husband for being so good at baseball as a wee lad, for without his mad skills (and eventual reluctance to my painting idea), this post would probably never have been written.  :)

.           .           .

 

Our Paint Chip Family

Ooh, DIY art.  It's my favorite.  And since I'm really, really, really bad/slow at getting real pictures put into real frames, it's really easy too.

So, when I saw the above gallery wall done by Jessica at Pretty Providence, specifically that framed triangle artwork in the upper left, I was inspired.  I got to work one nap time and created my own version of it in the form of a little abstract family portrait, a very abstract family portrait.See?

It's Anthony and I on the left (he's Neutral Gray even though he's anything but neutral and I'm red/orange or "Red Hot" as Behr calls it...ha!), and the kids are two blues and a golden yellow (or boring "Sunwashed Blue", "Honey Beige", and "Harbor").  It's going to have to get tweaked a little bit here in the next few months but since I did this project months ago and am just now getting around to sharing it, we'll stick with five triangles instead of the six we really need now.  The question that now remains is, what color should the new little lady be?  I'm accepting ideas...

The five of us are hanging in the toy corner in the living room; a little area we moved all the toys to last year when we rearranged this room for better functionality.

Want a little triangular fam of your very own?

You know you do!!  Here's how you can birth one...

Grab some paint chips.  I used chips I had on hand from prior projects.  

(Soapbox note:  I don't condone just going into a home improvement store and grabbing paint chips for free for projecting.  I feel like, and maybe this is a little dramatic, but that's almost stealing.  Somebody pays for those and even though they're up for grabs and free for us consumers, I don't think that means going and grabbing a bunch for non-paint related purposes is cool.  However, I do think that going into a home improvement store to buy something and supporting them financially in another way gives you a little more justification to maybe grab a few for a project.  Just my two cents.)

A few of them were squares so I just penciled a line halfway down the middle on the back to create two little triangles.  Then, I used one of those triangles as a template to cut triangles out of the chips that weren't squares.

Then I just cut out the triangles...with my food scissors, yes.  Sometimes they're just the closest and sometimes I'm just lazy.

 

And then I apparently didn't take or lost any and all pictures of how I got them in a frame but luckily, that's Kindergarten-level stuff.  I just grabbed an old frame I had laying around that I had broken the glass to years ago, stuck a piece of white, matte photo paper inside, and glued my triangles in the order I wanted them to the photo paper.  I used photo paper because it's a little thicker than regular computer paper but really, you can use any kind or color of paper you want.  It's your family.  Make it how you want it.  :) 

Along with our family triangle portrait, I hung this print from Hatch Prints (also used in our recent pregnancy announcement) in a thrifted oval frame that I spray painted white and the mat black (they were a nice shade of gaudy pink), and framed picture of the kids I rehabbed from this thrifted frame:

I bought it for the color of the frame but painted the mat white and then went back in and painted in the gray border for flavor.

This little corner of the living room is set now but we've made some major progress in other corners that I can't wait to share with you.  Stay tuned for one rather large update next week!  I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with boo fantel...

Pumped Out

I’m coming at cha with a quick one today guys!  This soap dispenser:

I saw it a couple of weeks ago on clearance at Walmart for $5 and, though I wanted it bad, I walked away because I’m too cheap for $5. 

But then when I went back to Walmart last week for groceries, there it was again except it had a nice little sticker that had it marked down to $3.50.  So, I pounced.

And then I removed the pump, taped off the bottom tube, and spray painted that puppy with Rust-Oleum’s Metallic Gold (I did prime it first though with some white Rust-Oleum spray primer).


I’ve been on this gray plus tan or gold kick for the past few months so this one just fed that fire perfectly.  Now it’s sitting prettier in the kids’/guest bathroom.  We had an old plastic dispenser in there for the longest time so this one was a welcome change.  Did I mention that the faceted gray bottle is glass?  I’ll take that over plastic almost any day.

I do have one small complaint though.  I don’t know if it’s that water hit it and wasn’t wiped off (I don’t wipe water off soap dispensers because I’m lazy and it’s a waste of time) or if I should’ve let it cure longer than the 24 hours I did before water hit it or what, but there’s been some spotting on the gold.  The pump is plastic which I don’t think matters since it seems to be something with the paint but either way, those spots are there.  I tried to wipe them off and some came off or lightened but not all.
 

But, for around $4, I’m not too concerned.  We’ll just call it a ‘vintage patina’ and embrace imperfection.

.           .           .

I have been working at a snail’s pace on the girls’ room in the past few weeks!  Reveal coming soon!  On top of that, I have three big things going on right now that you’re gonna wanna stay tuned for!  They’re like B-I-G!  :)

The Inspired Coffee Table

She painted the underside of the glass, my friend Lauren. 

A couple of weeks ago we went over to spend time with some of our bestest friends and there in the middle of their den was this gorgeous, new coffee table.  I just assumed they got it at some cool store and maybe it was even one-of-a-kind (and it is!).  That cool store happened to be her Grandmother’s house and the one-of-a-kind piece it is is because Lauren made it that way.  She took the hand-me-down table and painted the underside of the glass so that it looks like a beautiful, saturated, minty green sea set atop the original creamy white base.

By painting the underside, the green shows through the slightly mottled top but it won’t scratch, like paint can do very easily on glass.

I loved it.  I loved it so much I had to do it.  The next week, this coffee and end table set popped up on my go-to, second-hand sale site and I snatched them up real quick like, and for only $35.

My plan was to paint the coffee table just like Lauren did hers and turn the end tables into stools for another project.  We don’t have a need for another coffee table since I’m not ready to part with our tufted ottoman but I thought, since I needed the end tables, it’d be fun to do a little makeover for someone else.  (Stay tuned for the end tables…they’re too big to be stools like we wanted so we’re going to keep them end tables.)

So, first I removed the glass (which was just set in) and gave the whole base a quick coat of primer.  The legs of the table were wood while the rings were metal so I used Rust-Oleum Clean Metal primer* (cheap if you add it to an existing Amazon order!)  
To make sure I got every inch of the table, including the tough to reach areas under the rings, I first turned it upside-down and sprayed what I couldn’t easily get while it was right-side-up.

Then I turned it over, set the legs on some pieces of cardboard so the very bottoms wouldn’t get missed (since I was using a sheet as ground cover), and primed the rest.

And then I repeated the same process with the spray paint.  I used Rustoleum’s Heirloom white.  It’s a beautiful creamy white – not too ivory and not glaringly white.

Last, for the base at least, I added a little more interest by giving it a slight distressing.  Basically I put some very fine sandpaper onto a palm sander (that we’re still borrowing from a friend two years later…Thanks Gina!) and went around gently tapping it to the edges/corners of the base.  I didn’t sand along every edge fully but very sporadically.  This close-up shows the variation – some corners are sanded, some still are painted:

Next up was the glass top.  After a good cleaning on both sides, I turned it over so that it was upside-down on our kitchen table to be painted.  The underside of this glass was frosted which I wasn’t aware of until I went to grab the tables.  No big deal but I would’ve preferred clear.  The fact that it was frosted though meant that whatever color I painted onto it would appear a tad more subdued from above; like a filter was placed over the paint.  So, I made sure that the color I used was a little more saturated than I want it if I were painting over clear glass.

As for the color, I loved Lauren’s minty green (she used Martha Stewart chalkboard paint from Michael’s) so I made a similar color by adding the green color I painted these lamps to an almost-empty bottle of white acrylic paint I had on hand.  To paint the glass, I used a foam pouncer (from my trusty Martha Stewart set*).

Basically, I just squirted the paint onto the glass and swirled it around.  I worked in fairly large sections until the whole thing was covered.
You can see a video of me swirling the paint around here.

Here’s what it look liked after it dried and was placed back on the base:

The color looks a little more blue in the above pic vs. the truer-to-life color it is two pictures above but you can see the swirl effect.

It gave a fun effect however, I think I would’ve preferred it to be one solid color.  I didn’t know before I started if you’d be able to see the swirling or not once the glass was on the table since it didn’t really have light shining through it but you can.  I’m thinking of possibly doing the same thing to the glass on the end tables and for those, I’ll roll the paint on for a more solid look.

Backing up a tad though, before I placed the painted glass back onto the table, I placed rubber bumpers onto each leg, where the glass rested.  There were bumpers there before but one was missing and they were really dirty so I just grabbed some we had leftover from past cabinet transformations.

Here’s the full monty: 

 
Shortly after I finished, I listed it for sale and she went right out the door.  :)

.           .           .

So, painting glass.  Have you tried it?  I know it scratches off pretty easily so you have to either seal it or paint glass that won’t be touched.  I’ve painted behind the glass of picture frames before (here and here) but Lauren’s idea of painting the underside of a glass table was genius!  Think of all the options!  You could wash and repaint for every holiday and season!  Solids, patterns, abstract, a stencil…the options are endless!   

*affiliate links to items I used – if you purchase through my affiliate link, we’ll get a small commission but your price won’t be affected at all!  Thanks for supporting us!

DIY Shade Chandelier

(The fine print:  Some of the links to products below are affiliate links.  If you click on and/or buy from these links, I’ll get a small commission.  Your price doesn’t change a single bit but by buying through me, you help me/us to keep doing and doing and doing.)  :)

Let’s talk florescent lights…say, the one that once was in our kitchen.

It’s a pretty room to look at (although I’m biased) based on this semi-recent picture…until your eyes gravitate upward and notice the long, really outdated, really plain, and really ugly lighting (and you can’t see the end in the pic but the ends were a bisque color).  We HAD to do something about it.  Working with the existing light box, I gave us two options – some cool track lighting like this…

[image via Amazon]

…or a shade chandelier like this one that rings in at a wallet-biting $545:[image via Shades of Light] 

The problem was though, that I had very little cash to work with…but that’s always my problem, isn’t it? 

But you probably know, if you’ve been reading zee blog for any number of weeks, that that problem usually isn’t too tough for me to solve as long as I have a cup (or five) of coffee and a willing husband.  Since both of those things have a pretty good chance of being around…

We ended up with a new light fixture for $40.

You can read about how I made the shade here.  As for the chandelier underneath, I used this: An old wood and metal chandelier that someone donated to our church’s yard sale benefitting the Ecuador mission trip team.   I paid $8 for it.  I know you might see an old light fixture rehab and automatically click away because it sounds like a very intimating task involving lots of wires, possible welding, and lots of electrical mumbo jumbo.  But, I’m here to tell you it’s so easy!  If you can twist the lid off a Coke bottle and spray paint, you can refurbish a light fixture…pinky promise…or swear…or whatever.

Here is how I did it my friends.

First, I turned the chandelier upside down so that I could get at the bottom.  Then I unscrewed that little bronze filial right off.  It was screwed onto the end of a long threaded rod that went up into the middle of the fixture and so once the filial was off, the two pieces of wood you can see in the picture just slipped right off.

Under each light socket was the same type of filial that I just unscrewed to get those pieces of wood off.

I did the same thing for the other end, the top of the chandelier, except I unscrewed that ring that was connected to the hanging chain.

I made sure to take lots of pictures after every step so that I could remember how to put the chandelier back together.

With this particular chandelier, I didn’t mess with the metal bars holding the light sockets at all so I really didn’t have to mess with any wiring besides unwinding the existing wiring from the hanging chains before I pulled them off.

Initially, my plan was to paint all of the pieces – metal and wood – and put the chandelier back together the same way with the addition of a shade.  But then my friend Jesse and I were talking and she mentioned not even putting the wood back on, making for a much simpler chandelier.  I really liked that idea only I decided against it in the end because it would’ve required some shortening of the threaded rods and I didn’t know if that was possible without messing up the rods so instead I replaced the bulky wood pieces under each socket and the one under the middle of the chandelier with these wood ball knobs instead.

I had the greatest idea before this step though, to replace those bulky pieces with round acrylic balls instead but those balls alone would’ve cost me over $60 not to mention that I would’ve had to drill larger holes in them and I don’t know how feasible that would’ve been.  BUT, it would’ve been amazing, no?

Anyway, back to the wood knobs.  They were the exact height as the old bulky wood pieces so there was no cutting of threaded rods or wood cutting to do.  However, the pre-drilled holes in them only went in so far and they were too small to fit over the chandelier’s threaded rods.  To get them to fit, I first had to continue the pre-drilled hole through the whole ball.  To do that, I grabbed a drill bit the size of the hold and drilled through.

But the hole had to be even larger than that pre-drilled hole so then I grabbed a drill bit the size of the threaded rods on my chandelier and drilled an even bigger hole.

This part was a little tougher than I thought it would be.  Turns out, it’s a little difficult to drill into a small wood ball and hold the ball straight and steady all the while.  At first I held the ball with my bare hand and paid for that dumb mistake with a cut on the inside of my thumb when the drill slipped once.  After that I held the ball with my garden-gloved hand and it worked much, much better.

The bottom knob shows the size of the existing hole and the top shows the size I needed the holes to be. 
So once I had all those ball knobs drilled, I put them onto the chandelier.

Next, I had to figure out how I’d work the top of the chandelier so that I could fit my shade onto it.  I won’t go into much detail with this step because I know that every chandelier is different but in the end, I scrapped all the wood pieces that originally fit to the top.  Instead, I drilled another ball knob, threaded it on, placed the top lampshade ring over that, and cut a plastic tube (leftover from this lamp project) down to size and placed it on top of the lampshade ring.

[The plastic tube isn’t shown in the above picture but you’ll be able to see it below.]

It took me a day of brainstorming and messing with different placements to finally figure that out.  You see, I didn’t want the lamp shade to be super long and I wanted it to fall just past the bottom of the chandelier.  So, figuring out where exactly it had to sit on the top threaded rod so that it fell where I wanted it to at the bottom of the chandelier took a little trial and error; putting it together a hundred ways to see which way worked.  I took this picture after it was painted but you can see a part of that process.  With the chandelier on the ground, I would place the ring somewhere between the wood pieces on the top threaded rod and measure where it sat from the bottom of the chandelier with a tape measure.  Eventually, like shown in the above picture, I got it right.

Next up was the fun part – paint!  Except it took me awhile to figure out that too.  Which color?!
I loved the idea of a charcoal gray but then I thought it might look bad in the same room as stainless steel appliances.  Like the stainless steel might make it look really cheap.  I also thought maybe a gray-blue like the background of our valances or citron to add a punch of color.  In the end though, I went with white to keep things simple and neutral and added some colored elastic to punch up the volume.

To prep for paint, I had to cover those sockets and the wiring.  I cut strips of computer paper to place over the sockets; rolled them up, slipped them over, and taped off the tops.

To cover the wiring that came out of the top of the chandelier, I slipped it through a long piece of plastic tubing I had (the same I cut down to use on the top of the chandelier), not worrying if I got paint on it.

I hung the chandelier on the kids swing set to paint it, swings removed.  It was the perfect place.

First, I gave it a coat of Rust-Oleum Clean Metal primer.

And then I sprayed three thin coats of Rust-Oleum satin white, waiting a good half hour between each coat to do the next.

Once the paint was dry (I painted it in the morning and let it hang all day to dry), it was time to put the finished lamp shade on and get it ready to be hung.

The chandelier didn’t have a ceiling canopy with it (that top bowl-like thing) so I bought this white one.  It came with gold screws that are visible when hung so I’ll probably paint those white when I get a quick chance.

Anthony removed the old florescent light while I was putting the kids down for naps.

I don’t have a tutorial for you on how to do that (but Young House Love does!) but I was happy to see that it was easy to turn off the breaker in our refurbished laundry room cabinet.

Going…

going…
gone.


The only unfortunate thing about having to use the existing light box for us is that it’s not centered in the room.  It was placed down the middle as you’re looking down into our galley kitchen, but it’s farther towards the laundry room than it is towards the dining room.  I wish it were in line with the stove and microwave or the kitchen sink but it’s not and I’ll get over it.  Maybe someday we’ll move it but today isn’t that day.  Maybe someday we’ll also rid ourselves of the popcorn ceiling too because talk about dating a house.  Someday.

Installing the new light was quick for my handy man albeit with a little bit of bodily maneuvering around and under that big shade.  :)  (Need a tutorial on how to install a light fixture?  Check out this video!)

I still have to touch up the paint around the light box but I do love the view from below.     

Then there are the light bulbs.  I have a love/hate relationship with light bulbs.
My favorite light is a neutral, bright white light but the only light bulbs you can find that coming from are florescent bulbs and expensive LEDs (not plain incandescents which would’ve been great).  I didn’t want ugly fluorescents since they’d be visible and LEDs would’ve cost more than we spent to make the new light so those were out too.  I also didn’t want the orange light that ‘soft white’ brings or the blue light that daylight bulbs emit.  I have, however, read good things about the white light GE Reveal bulbs cast so I thought we’d give those a try.  Anthony grabbed a few packs while he was out and…
 
…the bulbs are blue.  Hmph.  But the light isn’t the usual orange of incandescents so we’re living with them for now.

Another thing I’m still trying to work with are the sockets.
 
You can see in the picture above that they’re yellowing.  The old socket covers were brittle and one was missing.  I can’t seem to find new socket covers short or wide enough so I’m still working on a fix.  At first I was just going to wrap those things up with some paper strips but then paper + hot sockets = a fire hazard???  Not sure but I don’t really want to burn the house down in the name of aesthetics.  Stay tuned for that and let me know if you have any ideas.

I know, this post is gettin’ real long.  Let me just save the best for last with a jump back into kitchen time.  Here’s what our cooking nook looked like when we were its house viewers.


Then we became the house owners and we painted the cabinets for free with leftover paint.

And then nesting/sense/darkness got the best of us and we went all light and bright painting the cabinets again, making a fun geometric runner, replacing the old laminate countertops, installing a subway tile backsplash, installing the microwave and shelf combo, and now the new chandelier.
 
Much, much better than day one, right?  What’s even better is that we’ve only spent about $3520 getting from what was to what is and that’s including all of the new appliances we put in a few years ago.

I’m not going to say our kitchen is ‘finished’ because just last week we were talking about blowing out the wall separating it from the living room but for now, we’re focusing on other rooms…like the living room.  More on that later.  I promise I won’t keep it all to my shelf.  ;)

Have a good rest of this (rainy here) Monday!  I’ll leave the lights on for ya. 

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