Holy Union

I always liked the light fixture that was installed in our dining room when we bought our house. It felt fun and interesting... but then two things happened. 1. We painted the walls yellow which made the little votives look kind of dirty in comparison, and 2. the bulbs started burning out, and it turns out they cost $9 a piece. I've already spent $27 replacing bulbs, and I'm sure the other ones are close to burning out as well, so I figured I'd cut my losses and get something new.

Shall we pay our respects with a throwback to this hilarious moment?

Moving on. I've been on the lookout for the perfect fixture for the past 6 months or so, and finally, this guy went on sale at Crate & Barrel.

The mighty Union Pendant was still a little more than I wanted to spend, so lucky me that I got to buy the floor sample for an additional 15% off. I used the last of our wedding gift card money and paid the balance out of pocket which felt very weird, since we've shopped for "free" at Crate & Barrel for over a year now!

Had I hung the fixture exactly as it came, it would have nearly sat on the floor because the chain was so long. Typically, you just remove extra lengths to shorten it up, but the wonderful people at Crate & Barrel had soldered every. single. chain. link. together. This meant that I had to saw through the links and then bend them apart, which added an additional hour or so to the process. I'm a little nervous that I now have little metal filings embedded in my skin from all the sawing, which I only know is something to be concerned about because when you go to get an MRI, they ask you if there's a possibility of having metal shavings in your body. I guess because the magnet would pull them out  (the M of MRI stands for magnetic)? Yikes. Fingers crossed I don't ever have to find out.

Anyway, onto the fun part. Let's install this baby! I don't have very many pictures of the installation process because holy cow are light fixtures heavy, which makes balancing on a ladder and snapping pictures a bit tricky. 

Step 1. Turn off power to the fixture

Step 2. Remove the fixture (de-couple the fixture's wires from the ceiling wires)

Step 3. Install the new fixture (re-couple the fixture's wires with the ceiling wires, being sure to match black to black, white to white, and copper to copper)

Step 4. Have sore arms for 5 days from holding the fixture up for so long. Oh, and marvel at your work.

The old one is sitting in the garage waiting for me to Craigslist it. Know anyone that wants an inexpensive light fixture with semi-expensive bulbs?

Now I have this pretty view when I come down the stairs. It's nice and substantial feeling without being bulky, and it only has one bulb! 

The one that's in there is the one that came with it, but I think I may switch it out for an Edison bulb. Any suggestions on where to get them? Good deals? Cool shapes? I've never bought one before so I'm not "in the know."

The Silver Lining

Our house doesn't fail to deliver in the outdated light fixture department. You may recall that our handyman's assistant took down the brass light fixture that hung over our entry way.

I originally planned to replace it, but after shopping around and realizing it was going to be around $200 to get any sort of decent one, I decided to opt for a $3 can of spray paint instead. John and Sherry spray painted their door knobs, so I figured that if they could spray paint things that get handled fairly regularly, I could spray paint something that won't get touched for the next decade. 

The first step was to remove the glass panes. 

Then I roughed it up with some 220 grit sand paper.

To the left of our driveway is an area with rocks, and I figured it would be a great spot for the spraying because I wouldn't paint the driveway with overspray and I could use the rocks to hold down some news paper.

I also taped off the spots where the bulbs screw in so I wouldn't ruin them with the spray paint... you can barely see the blue tape in this pre-spray picture. For the new finish, I decided to go with Rust-Oleum Satin Nickel. I had realistic expectations about it not looking like actual nickel, but since it'll be two stories above peoples' heads, I doubted anyone will know the difference. Unless they've read this post, in which case they most definitely will.

I've read the same thing over and over and over: lots of light coats, not one thick drippy one. I tested out my spraying action on the bottom and it went pretty well.

So, I moved on to the rest.

I let it dry for about 10 minutes, then flipped it over and did the other side. It was looking much better, but still clearly needed another coat.

I knew if I put on another coat right away it would fall into the thick drippy category, not the light, thin coat category, so I decided to let it dry over night. The tricky thing was that I wanted all sides to be off the ground while it dried, but no orientation that would allow for that. Then I realized I could hang it by the wires so it could dry on all sides.

Once I hung it up, I realized that this was really the best way to spray it, so when I went back the next day for my second coat I re-hung it up outside to avoid painting my garage Satin Nickel.

It was still pretty brassy, so I was getting a little nervous about if this spray painting adventure would be for nothing.

Luckily, two light coats later it was completely covered and looking about two decades fresher.

After it dried over night, I replaced the panes of glass.

Then Jerry came by and hung it up!

It looks so much better! It's amazing what paint on the walls and spraypaint on a fixture can accomplish.

Luckily I think all of our fixtures have been either replaced or made over (or moved over) at this point. Hopefully that means I won't need to tackle any electrical work in the near future, although I do plan to replace a few outlets, but that's pretty low on my priority list.

What did you all do this weekend? Do you have any experience spray painting light fixtures? Or other surprising things? 

Neutralizing the Candy Corn

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days... life got super crazy super fast and I haven't had the time or energy to go through all the pictures I've taken! We've done a couple of big projects that I'll post soon... here's a little one to tide you over!

The pendant light over the sink has been bothering me more and more lately... I didn't love it initially, but it wasn't really on my radar as something that needed to change.

Then I started seeing a floating piece of candy corn...

Can you see it?

Ever since I made that connection I just couldn't get it out of my head. It had to go. Usually I'd try and DIY it, but unfortunately there's not much that can be done. To change the color I'd really need to paint it somehow, and doing that would most likely make it opaque, thus not letting light through. A light-less light fixture seems a bit pointless. So, I decided to replace it. 

I took off the old shade (is that what you call it?) and was left with this.

I got a new, plain but pretty white one. I know it seems boring and neutral, but the walls are going to be yellow, so neutral was the way to go.

I figured I'd just use the old ring that screws onto the fixture's body to put the new shade on... but it didn't fit the new shade.

So, I went to Home Depot to see if they sold bigger rings, and the nice man working there gave me a free one out of his "junk drawer." Point for Home Depot. They're absolutely demolishing Lowe's.

To my dismay, the new ring was the right size for the new shade, but wouldn't go on the body of the fixture. So, I went back to Home Depot to see if the ring was defective. It wasn't. That left me with one option: replace the fixture. They had a stainless one, but the cord running down to the shade was clear plastic which let you see through to the three wires inside that are coated in white, black, and green plastic. Who's idea was that?! I decided to get a black one even though I was a little nervous it would clash with the stainless appliances and the stainless track lighting in the kitchen. Once I got home though, I realized that the fixture in the dining room is black so it ties in just fine!

The next issue was that the fixture came with 4 feet of wire, which had it just about resting on the counter. Seriously, nothing is ever as easy as it seems. So, I had to strip the wire, which I had never done before.

First I cut it to the length I wanted.

Then I took my exacto knife and cut through the outer layer of insulation while being careful not to cut into the inside wires. Then I pulled off the outer piece.

I cut through the insulation of each of the wires and pulled them off! It was actually really easy. Whew.

I took down the old bracket.

Replaced it with the new one, then capped the wires. 

And screwed it in!

The shade pulls it taut so it's not all wonky and crooked. Now that it's been hanging for a few days it's nice a straight :)

Sadly, the light switch to the pendant is actually switchless because of some of the work we're doing in the kitchen, which means I can't turn it on to make sure it's working or to see its beauty. Just a few more days and I'm sure we'll get to turn it on :)

Seriously y'all, we've made huge progress on the condo!! I'm so excited to share it soon :)

Let There Be Light Fixtures

The light fixtures in the bathroom were the typical builder-grade ones you'd expect in a new construction home. Our place was built in '99 though, so the owners held out for a solid 13 years on changing them. I held out for a month.

The half bath.

The guest bath (old faucet and all, because I'm too traumatized to ever change it).

The master bath 

You may have noticed the angle is super weird... taking pictures with a mirror in the frame is just tricky. I'm worried about having a MySpace moment... see?

Anyway, I went to trusty Home Depot and found zero light fixtures that I liked. I didn't want anything fancy or expensive, just a little upgrade to bring the bathrooms into this decade. I swung by Lighting Inc. and found a very helpful man named Roland who showed me a lot of different options. Once I had found some fixtures I was happy with he surprised me by giving me the contractor's discount which saved me about $15 on each fixture. I was extremely pleased and thankful! I had had a few bad experiences at this place before with another salesperson so I'm glad to have found Roland. I won't forget him.

Now, onto changing them out. First thing is to always shut off the power to that fixture. Then I unscrewed the bulbs and pulled off the little silver rings that went around the bulbs and held the plate on the wall.

Then I took the plate off.

I removed the screws holding the back plate to the wall.

Then I removed the caps that connect the fixture's wires to the house's wires.

I pulled the plate off the wall.

I was expecting to find an electrical box here, but instead they just punched a hole in the wall. It's not even a nice round one, or a small one, it's just a randomly shaped, randomly sized, uncentered hole. I just used the screws that held the old fixture in the wall to screw the new one in.

Then I capped the wires. Black from the wall goes to black from the fixture, white from the wall goes to white from the fixture, copper (the ground wire) from the wall goes to copper from the fixture.

Then I put the fixture on the plate and screwed it in using the little screws they provided (you can see the two on top and two on bottom). Please forgive my nasty fingerprints.

I screwed bulbs in and flipped the breaker to make sure it worked... and it did!

Added the shades...

And DONE! Well, the light is done. The mirror is a work in progress that I'll share soon :)

I repeated the same process for the guest bath. Sorry you can't really see the fixture...

The process was more or less the same for the master bath, but the fixture was much heavier so I broke out some anchors/mollies to secure the back plate to the wall.

And done!

Hello there...

Anyone have any tips for taking pictures with mirrors in them? Doing it from the side was tricky because the wall was in the way. 

I'm glad that overall this upgrade was pretty quick and painless. Just another project that makes me thankful for my headlamp, because boy oh boy is it dark in a windowless room with no power ;)

I'm about to make John & Sherry a little DIY project for their book signing tonight. I CAN'T WAIT TO MEET THEM!!!! Matt Damon? Sarah Jessica Parker? The Dalai Lama? Superman? Nope. John and Sherry are my heroes.