Exciting stuff has been going on here for the past few days. We were both hesitant to bring in any contractors for at least the first few months, just so I could get everything kind of situated and then figure out exactly what needed to be changed and in what order. And I’ve been tackling some quicker projects myself, like painting bathrooms and dining rooms, fixing up the bedroom, and planning some landscaping. But last week we finally brought in two trusted contractors– a carpenter and an electrician. The carpenter, a friend, will be helping out with some more complex projects in a few months, but we put the electrician right to work, changing out four ceiling fixtures throughout the house.
All of the light fixtures that came in the house are OK… most I recognized from the Hampton Bay aisle of Home Depot. Yawn! But some online shopping and three hours later, we’re making progress to eliminate the boring, snooze-worthy fixtures from the house. Obviously nothing in the house was even close to original. I could have gone with reproductions but decided to go with something a little more fun.
Let’s start in the entryway, which is a really small area with a cluttered coat rack and the smallest bathroom of all time. I would have loved to do an entry chandelier here, but the house honestly probably never had anything grander than a single bulb flush mount. So I grabbed a Restoration Hardware farmhouse light when they were on sale a while back. I wasn’t positive if it would go in the living room, entry, or the top of the stairs, but once we held it up it seemed to be a pretty good fit here. And please excuse the mess, etc… this area still needs a LOT of help.
The farmhouse looks great, I think… but we also discovered that we’re going to do a lot of paint patching. Why people don’t remove light fixtures when they paint a ceiling, I will never understand. The entryway will all be painted soon, so we’ll just leave it like this for a little while.
This was also when we discovered that we do indeed have the original 1928 wiring throughout the house (I knew we had it in the bathroom from when I replaced the sconces but wasn’t sure exactly how old it was or if it was safe). The electrician assured me that it was perfectly safe as long as it was in good condition, which it was. He also noticed that the lights all had grounding wires running from the switches, which means someone was paying attention when they started making improvements.
The next light was the bathroom. I had already switched out the sconces and painted, so as a reminder here was the lower part of the room:
You can’t even tell in the photos how bad this light is. But finding a replacement wasn’t easy– the switch in the bathroom only controls the sconces, so the new fixture had to have a pull cord that reached from the ceiling without knocking into/damaging the shade.
I wanted to get a matching porcelain one to the sconces but couldn’t find one with a pull cord, and those can’t be custom ordered. My alternate idea was to get a vintage cut crystal pendant, but again the Etsy shopowner said he couldn’t add the cord. I had to custom order this one in oil rubbed bronze from Rejuvenation, but they kind of screwed it up and without our wonderful electrician would have never been able to get it working ourselves. And honestly, now that it’s up, I’m not so sure about it. I think I need to spraypaint the inside of the shade white to make it look more like the porcelain sconces– it’s just super harsh and bright right now. I also might just order a new shade… we’ll see. At least it’s better than it was.
And finally… the super fun one! When we first saw the house, it had a decent looking pendant in the dining room. Not my style but kinda cute. During negotiations, the seller asked if he could take this light with him, and since we had planned on probably replacing it anyway, just let him have it. He ended up installing another light when he moved out– I guess this was what was there when he bought the house a year earlier. And while it was nice having some type of light in the dining room (as opposed to him just leaving a hole in the ceiling), there is NO way this one was going to stay. Is it the worst thing ever? No. But for such a central room, I knew we needed to do something special in here.
I came across Stimulight on Etsy and held out for a few months before finally biting the bullet and ordering one. And then it sat in the box for a few months because I knew I couldn’t do it myself. I actually probably would have attempted the other fixtures on my own if I hadn’t known I’d had to call an electrician for this one, but that turned out to be a blessing because I would have been on the floor, crying, wrapped in electrical tape and bruises if I’d tried to do any of this myself. Even the electrician left the house punctured and bleeding. This is a tough fixture to hang! It looks AMAZING though, and even though we knew we would have a dining table under it (and could therefore hang it a little lower than usual since nobody can walk into it), we decided to hang it a little on the high side so that it wouldn’t compete with the french doors and built-in for visual interest. I think it’s absolutely perfect for this room– I can’t imagine anything better.
The final light was for the office, and I didn’t know if we would actually get around to ever doing this one. I’m going to write a full post about it, so I’ll save the photos for next time.
That’s all for now! I’m super excited to have broken the barrier of welcoming in a professional… maybe this renovation will be easier than the last one after all.
Cheers,
❤ v
giftable@home 