Lighting

60 days until we move! Selling furniture and appliances on Craigslist! If you need something, let me know…I may have it for sale!

Lighting plays a huge part in the comfort of a space, and we are making sure that we are adding enough can lights to illuminate Fort Knox. Thank heavens for dimmers!  Plus, the atmosphere is really determined by the various levels of lighting – upper/mid/lower.

Most of the lighting we have on hand, though we are being temped by some of the new trendy looks such as the rectangular lamp shade for over our dining table!

Of course the prices are just not something I can consider….so, I am thinking of jazzing up this 42x10x10 fixture!

It’s the same shape, much more reasonable price!  I think it would look so cool covered in a natural fabric to let some light in, don’t you? Here is an example of of the look from Lampsplus.

I saw a cool post yesterday about how to cover a lampshade with fabric, and I think I can do it. Took about a million clothespins to hold it while the glue dried, but that is probably a small price to pay for sanity. I am off to the fabric store to look at burlap and price clothespins!

Update: I went by Lighting Outlet and it was awesome! I explained what I was looking for to Mr. Blankenship, the owner, and immediately found me a light I love and can buy for $149! Wow! No website, but here is the contact info:

Light Fixture Outlet

4637 Nations Crossing Road

Charlotte, NC 28217-1813

Phone:(704) 523-6462

Now, isn’t that a coooooool light? I didn’t like the wobbly wires and talked to The Lamp Place today and Octavia was incredibly helpful! She suggested I purchase the light since it was a great price and then bring it to them to put rods on and make sure it will work with the angled ceiling. Plus, the wiring it comes with is not long enough and they can correct that at the same time. Thanks Octavia!!!! They don’t seem to have a website so here is their contact info!

The Lamp Place

3108 South Blvd
Charlotte, NC 28209

(704) 523-4339

Also, one has to consider the other lighting that is happening in the same space. We have a large chandelier (36″) that we’ll be hanging in the middle of the seating area centered on the new fireplace. Sadly, I don’t have a picture of it. It’s a pretty iron and a bowl type with candelabras around the edge. Light will go up to illuminate the beams and ceiling and softly down.

The kitchen area will have two pendant/chandeliers with one on each end. The center area where the sink is located will have strong task lighting from above. The chandeliers may be what we already own:

I love these. Lots of light too.

The desk/office area will have three tiny pendants. Those we’ll select last since we want everything else to work together. There are loads of options for pendants. Here are a couple of my favorites!

More Electrical in the Renovation

The electricians are working hard to complete the electrical work. We are adding lighting in all the ceilings. Guess it just wasn’t the thing to do in 1958. Plus, the addition area needed the florescent lights removed and new lighting added.

Here is our master bedroom.  On the left side will be the headboard of our bed. We’ll be placing two reading lights in the ceiling also.

Nathan’s room was the insulation storage area. But now, it is getting some lighting!

The painting was started too. We’ll be painting all the trim and doors. Except there are some lovely stained wood doors in the hallway that are too gorgeous to paint. We can paint them later if we want, but thought we’d love to keep them if we can. In the addition area, they did not use pretty stained doors, so everything will be painted. Mike is going back and caulking every joint and filling every nail hole. They did not do that when it was built. He also is pulling up the baseboard to paint it. If you don’t, it will have paint down to the level of the carpet and you run the risk of painting your carpet. Yuck!

Mike says we are still on target for our Nov. 19th move date! Hooray!

Labor Day was definitely a LABOR intensive day

Whew, we spent two days straight at the new house figuring out our lighting plan. Nothing drives us more crazy than a light switch put in upside down or in the wrong order. You know you will always go for the switch that SHOULD turn on the light, have to back up and do it again to get the right switch, if it is not done right.

So, instead of hiring an architect to design our lighting plan, we decided to do it ourselves using the handy post it method. You know, those slightly sticky yellow post it notes?

This seems to work really well and so far, our electrician has been quite pleased with it. The problem we ran into was that we ended up having to actually figure out where the furniture would be placed so we put the lights in the proper location on the wall or ceiling. Then,  we had to figure out what made the most sense for placement of the switches.

In the end, we felt really happy with the design and it was exciting to see the start of the wiring yesterday. Of course, last night we decided to change our entire home theater system concept, and will need to add one more switch. Thankfully, our builder is quite flexible when we do this kind of thing!

We also were thrilled to see the start of the tray ceiling in the kitchen!

You can really get a sense of the room this way. The left side of the tray looks a little skinny right now because of the temporary support wall.  The steel beam is scheduled to be delivered on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, it will be installed, then the additional level of the tray will be built. Quite an improvement over our initial plan, thanks to MICHELLE!

 

Here are a few more pictures of canned lights going into the ceiling of the study. See, we are calling it a study now instead of gameroom!  I really like the placement over the boys’ desks which will be in front of the windows. We had them center the ceiling fan, which for some odd reason, was not centered, remove the hanging pendant in the far right corner, and add a few more cans. Guess we better find some ceiling fans for the home quickly!

Smote detectors are scheduled for this room and also the florescent lights were removed in the two offices. We’ll re-use the florescent in a closet being green.

Ok, watch for the next post to be about brick! You know how much I dislike it. Well, I am about ready to tackle that project.