A few years back we decided to take down the eye sore that was the fluorescent light box protruding from the ceiling in our kitchen. It was an obvious time warp that dated our kitchen right back to the day it was built…in the mid nineties. It’s crazy to think that was twenty-five years ago, but when looking at the style of homes built during that era, it is clear we have progressed in design choices. Thank goodness pink tile and carpet are not a thing any longer, as my house was deep in the throes of that Barbie design style. To purge the pink tile and paint from the kitchen, I had to come up with a short term solution until we could do a real remodel. I did chalk paint on the cabinets and we made concrete counters in lieu of granite, until we could save up for them. As for the lighting, we had this massive fluorescent light casting the nastiest garish hue on our kitchen by night, and by day it just stuck out like a sore thumb. It didn’t really provide much in the way of task lighting for cooking, either. What we really needed was a layering of light, some for task lighting and some for ambiance.
First, we had to tear off the old light box and add wiring for the can lights and pendant lights we planned to install. To achieve this, we cut out a huge hole in the ceiling, mainly because it was going to be easier to patch one large sheet of drywall than to fill in around where the drywall was missing from the old frame for the light box. We added four recessed can lights for task lighting, which was just enough to make it bright, but not too many so it wouldn’t look like our ceiling was Swiss cheese filled with holes everywhere! It was quite an endeavor to get the wiring done since we added a switch for the pendant lights so they could be turned on without having the can lights being on. We even had to send our son up into the ceiling to crawl across and grab the wire as Dean pushed it up through the wall, because his wire tape wouldn’t reach. It was quite the ordeal! For the lighting over the island, I had had my eye on Darlana pendant lights, but they were pretty pricey, so I searched for a look-a-like, and found one from Joss and Main!
Continue reading “Ditching the ultra 90’s kitchen lighting”
31 Downing Street 