One of the things that's always bugged me about the main floor of my house was this ugly overhead light that was in the dining area. The fixture itself wasn't particularly attractive, and the overhead light was sort of like being in a conference room. As a result, I almost never had it on, so it was kind of a waste of space. (I could have sworn I took other pictures of it before I took it down, but can't find them, so this one below is the best I could do to show you the "before.")
My plan to replace it was to find a pendant lamp that hung down over the dining table, to help define the space, and also to make the light a little warmer, rather than having it be this horrible overhead lighting. But the tricky part was to also find something that was the right size: too much chandelier would overwhelm the relatively small space, and too small would just look odd. I found a nice lamp from Crate and Barrel that I thought kind of fit with the other linens and natural fibers I have in various spots in my house, and was a nice medium size. Then it was just a matter of installing it...yikes.
I toyed with the idea of doing it 100% myself because I had seen some things online that convinced me it wasn't that tricky. So I managed to learn a little bit about the whole process, but then chickened out at the last minute after talking to some friends and deciding it was best for me, a novice DIY-er, to NOT mess with potentially lethal powers. But! I have no shame in asking my friends to mess with those same powers, so once again I called in the masterful Pat Smith.
Once again, Pat very patiently came over to help me take out the old lamp, install the new lamp, and show me everything he did along the way. In fact, he was right - it wasn't that hard once you knew a few simple rules about the colors of the wires, and had a couple cheap pieces of equipment to twist the wires together and to tell when a wire was hot or not. So here's the finished product:
Nice, huh? I'm pretty delighted with it. I went from never ever using that light fixture at all, and having half the room be dark constantly, to having it on all the time when I'm home. I love its shape, and the light it casts really makes the warm feel so much warmer. Plus, it was a huge bonus that I learned I don't have to hire an electrician to do stuff like this! I've got another overhead light in the hallway that has irked me from day one, so that's next on my list, and that one I'm determined to do myself - possibly with Pat's supervision, since I'm still a little bit of a scaredy-cat.
You may have noticed the weird brown colorings on the wall in those pictures above. No, this is not some odd new modern art I've picked up. I'm working on picking out a new color for many of the walls on the main floor, and those are the finalists. There'll be a more complete post about that one of these days, so stay tuned!
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