Friday, May 26, 2017

More Lighting (2 of 3)

So...I've been slowly chipping away at painting the trim, and every so often going off and doing some side projects. One of those has been lighting. My last post showed how I used some spray paint to experiment with updating a gold light fixture. Well, this time I actually did some electrical work. 

Have you ever heard of the ReStore? Habitat for Humanity has a store with second-hand and unused building materials and furniture, including things like light fixtures, at much lower prices than you would find in a hardware store. It's not good for everything, but it's worth checking out. They had a whole area for chandeliers, and we found one that would wonderfully replace our ugly gold one for just $60 (it was one of the most expensive chandeliers there). We got some other things that weekend, and they were having a storewide sale, so it actually ended up being $48.


So...one night when Kristen was at Young Women's, I decided to pull out the extension ladder, climb up it carrying a heavy chandelier, and wire it into the ceiling. It ended up taking me a lot longer than I'd hoped, because I had to rewire it after I'd gotten it on once. The threaded post it came with was too short, and I needed to switch to the one from the gold chandelier instead. Here's the old chandelier:


And the new one:


I also didn't have enough lightbulbs at the time, so you can see there are two missing. But success! And no electrocution!

I also switched things up with some other light fixtures. I painted another gold dome light (similar style to the one in my last post), and also did this fan. I don't have a wide shot of the before, but this at least shows the color difference. The metal portion is a bronze, and the blades a light brown. I used some of the paint from redoing the cabinets for the blades, and the satin nickel metallic spray paint. I think it looks awesome. :) One fan down, one more to do. 



And in case you're wondering the kind of paint I used, here it is. Rust-Oleum Metallic Paint and Primer in One - Satin Nickel (I actually painted over the top of the silver paint I used in my last post with this stuff - it looked better for the lights). And Dark Chocolate Milk Paint from General Finishes with a Gel Topcoat for the blades (two coats of each).