Lighting Post 4 of 3

When I wrote my last lighting post, I technically wasn't finished. Okay, even now I'm technically not finished. However, I am done with the bulk of my lighting adventures. You might remember my previous three posts, where I spray painted some lights, swapped out a chandelier and painted a fan, and completely redid all the bathroom light fixtures (including splitting one fixture into two), and painted the other fan.

In my last post, I mentioned I needed to replace all the dome lights. And...I did. It really did take about 10-15 minutes per light. I changed out six of them. The last thing to do will be to replace our bedroom light with a small fan, and replace the gumball light in the playroom with our bedroom light. (yes, there will probably be a 5 of 3 post in the future). Here are what the lights looked like before:

And after:

Lighting Final (3 of 3)

With the exception of buying new dome lights and replacing them (which will take about 5 minutes per light), we are done with lighting changes. Finally. First off, if you haven't seen my other lighting posts, check out number 1 and number 2.

In my last post, I posted about the chandelier, as well as painting one of our fans. So first off, I finished the second fan. The first two times I painted light fixtures, I left them up on the ceiling, then just taped off around them. Spray paint fumes aren't fun, though, so after the success of my chandelier wiring (see post 2), I decided to unwire the fixtures and take them outside to spray paint. That went much more smoothly (though a bit difficult getting the fan back up on the ceiling - the wiring part was easy - the actual mounting proved a bit tricky). Here are the before and after of fan #2.

Next, I decided to tackle the bathroom lighting. As I mentioned in post #1, we had that Hollywood lighting in all our bathrooms, and I was looking for something nicer. So I purchased Hampton Bay Andenne light bars, via eBay and Amazon. As with most things you buy from sources like that, there were a few hiccups and a couple trips to Lowe's for additional parts. The half bath and the upstairs bath were both fairly straightforward. Turn off electricity, remove bulbs, pull out bulb holders, pull off face plate, then unscrew mounting plate from junction box, unwire light.

Then do it in reverse. Install mounting plate (though that was actually trickier than expected - I had to get creative with how I connected it - in the end, I bought different mounting plates than were supplied with the lights), wire light to wires in wall (also tricky with one of the lights which, turns out, was missing a wire - dang eBay) - black to black, white to white, ground to ground. Finally, attach light fixture to mounting screws and secure, pop in bulbs, turn power back on, and voila: light!

Half Bath

Girls' Bathroom

I still need to patch and paint, of course (stupid painting). The tricky part was when I decided to do the master bathroom, and replace one big (eight-light) light bar with two three-light fixtures. Because there was only one junction box originally, I had to move it and install another one. Which also meant running wire through the wall. I basically followed all the steps I found in this blogger's post...mostly.

Because you see, when I decided where to put the lights, it just made sense that I would want to put them directly over the sinks, right? Well, I should have double checked that they would FIT right over the sink. Cuz...they didn't. Here's the process:

1. Remove Lights / Cut Giant Hole in Wall and Holes in Studs / Put New Wire in Wall

2. Put Junction Boxes in Place / Pull Wires Through / Start Patching Drywall

3. Finish Putting in Drywall Pieces

4. Tape Drywall Joints

5. Mud Drywall (Not Pictured: Sand a Ton and Get Dust Everywhere

6. Attach wires to light fixtures, turn back on breaker, screw in bulbs, switch on lights, realize left lights aren't working, take everything apart and put back together and then apart again, realize one of the wires was loose, reattach everything again, then sing hallelujah when all the lights come on

7. (Not Pictured) Cry when you realize you should have held up the light fixtures to the wall before you did all that work, so you would know in advance not to put them too close to the wall, since the window shades won't fit where they are

8. Take everything back apart, cut some more holes, move the lights over a few inches, go through the whole process again, and breathe a sigh of relief that it's all done

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).

Lighting (1 of 3)

I am currently working on updating all of our outdated trim, and it's taking longer than expected. I also want to paint the walls before I reattach said trim, so it may be a while before I have something substantial to post on here.

Also, I've been getting a little disheartened that it is taking me so long to finish this project, and I've been having a tough time staying motivated (which just drags out the timeline more). So I thought there might be some "quick wins" I could attempt that would help keep me motivated. Here is the first one.

Our lights are outdated. And gold. Yup, gold. We have a few dome lights, some mushroom lights, and a globe or two. In the bathrooms we have hollywood lighting.

Needless to say, updating the light fixtures is on our list, though it won't be for a while.

Anyway, I found a tutorial that talked about using metallic spray paint to update your fixtures (take off the glass and light bulbs, put up paper on the ceiling around the light and around the internals, then spray). Since I am already planning on replacing them, and I just happened to have metallic spray paint in my cupboard, I thought, "Why not?" Here are the results of my 15-minute experiment. What do you think?

I like it, but will probably grab a can of "satin nickel" for any other updates (ceiling fans??) instead of the "silver" I used here. I think this is a little bright.