And Then There Was Light...

What a time to decide to change our light fixture. It was about 7:30 one evening and I decided I wanted to put our new fixture, I bought from Joss & Main, up in the dining room.

Justus Chandelier - Golden Lighting. Joss & Main. $144.90 with tax & shipping

I hadn’t painted around the hole on the ceiling, didn't have the medallion I wanted to use and wasn't... quite frankly...prepared. We definitely weren't prepared either for what we would discover.

As we assembled the fixture and I gave Nathan all the mechanical parts to figure out our game plan of installing the fixture. We discovered the awesome electrical and junction box work of the generations before us. I apologize, I do not have a picture.

But, there was a hole with wires straggling out and beside it, a nice shiny metal hook that the ceiling fan was just hanging out on. Wonderful, right? 

First of all, no junction box means not attaching the fixture in a conventional method. Temporarily, just to have a fixture working in the room, we rigged up a system. We hooked the light fixture onto the hook and connected the wires up, coming from the hole. Let me tell you, I thought my life was flashing before my eyes when Nathan asked me to switch it on and I think my hand came up to cover my face and head. He wasn't impressed with my actions. However, the light came on just fine and I...fell in love! But come to find out... the fixture is not at all in the center of the room...at all. I'm not talking 6" or 10"... I'm talking 18" off-center. Due to depth perception and the angles, there is no good way to capture, just how off-centered, the light fixture is. 

Our Solution...being the impatient, DIYer, "I want this done right now!" person that I am, we decided the best solution, at almost 9 o'clock at night, was to...move the table under the light fixture. Ha! The table is now centered underneath the light fixture, and not in the middle of the room. Now that we have shifted the table to be centered under the light fixture, it’s very close to the window and we have a dance floor on the other side. Dance Party! 

There was a little glimmer of hope while Nathan’s uncle, Jeff, was visiting last weekend. I explained to Jeff that I had planned to put a medallion on the ceiling to surround the base of the fixture but I wanted to put the fixture up and think on it more, to make the best decision. He then suggested we purchase a large medallion, large enough to allow us to put the ceiling fixture in the center of the room and hide the wires underneath it. The diameter of the medallion would be able to hide the stretch of wire from the hole. In the end that would mean, we wouldn’t have to tear into the ceiling to move the wires and install a new junction box. YAY...for a low-cost solution.

I was able to score a 24" medallion off of Amazon for $39.99 + tax & shipping, which was worth it!

Henta Ceiling Medallion

No update so far, as we are waiting for it to arrive and then we can center the fixture, install the medallion, hide a mess, and call it complete.

To some of you, this may seem like the easy/inexpensive way out, when we should be thinking about doing it the right way for the long haul. Although, in this home renovation, our motto really has been, "if it’s broke, don’t fix it." 

Bad motto...?

I know, I know... but for us, our budget, and at our age, this works. Right now, this whole house is a a really, REALLY big project. We’d like to fix it up and get to living in it. When money allows down the line, we can take projects on one at a time and make things right. In our defense, updating a house to modern-day standards, takes away from the character and could possibly end up costing more than just building new.

Here are some after pictures. The room has a little way to go, but we really are making progress, if you can believe that.

Here is the light off...

And here is the light on...

And that concludes today's presentation. Please tune in again soon for updates on the medallion installation.