Tag: lighting

Ditching the ultra 90’s kitchen lighting

by margotrd, posted in Projects, Renovations

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.

This is how our kitchen looked from the real estate listing, before we bought it. Unfortunately you can’t really see the light!

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!

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Faux Arteriors DIY Chandelier

by margotrd, posted in DIY, Projects

This post contains affiliate links

You know the feeling when you find a picture of something online and you just have to have it? But, then you go searching to find it, and learn you will NEVER own said item because it cost more than you car (well, mine, maybe not yours). This is exactly what happened to me while scouring the net to find a chandelier for my living room. I had found this Prescott Arteriors Chandelier, and my heart swooned.

I was in love with the dramatic, sculptural style it offered. I loved the glitzy gold, yet it wasn’t overly refined and typical like most lighting. The sad part came when I learned it wasn’t wide enough, only 21″ in diameter… oh, and it cost a cool $1,600. I think my heart stopped when I saw that hefty price tag, as it is literally more than I spent for my car. But, I knew I could still figure out a way to make it! I just needed to devise a plan on how to make it not look like something that was obviously homemade.

My first thought was to buy a large drum shade and put a pendant light inside it. Easy enough, right? However, needing an extra large drum shade made things much more difficult to source and way more expensive when I would find an option that could work. The minimum width I would look for was 32 inches, because I wanted the chandelier to be dramatic and take up some space of the high ceiling. Being a penny pincher, my next idea was to use a round Vittsjo Ikea coffee table I found on Craigslist, cut down the legs to make it shorter, and then drill holes through the legs for chain to hang the light. It totally think this idea would have worked, but thankfully I didn’t have to go that route because I found an oversized 34″ drum pendant light on Craigslist for $40. Made by CB2, it was practically brand new and exactly what I needed. Here is the one I got:

It is $199 brand new, so I was thrilled to get it a more than 75% off. There were a few things to do before it could work for what I needed. 1. The cord and stainless cable had to go- way too modern for what I was going for. 2. It didn’t produce enough light with just a single lightbulb- I’d have to find a way to add lights.

I stripped off the pleated linen outer shell from the drum shade, but I left the diffusing lens at the bottom of the light so you wouldn’t be able to see the inner workings of the light when I was done. I ended up buying another pendant light off Craigslist for $20 to use as the actual light fixture. It had three lights and had hooks where it attached to the bowl, so I could use those to attach to the shade frame. It was similar to this:

After attaching the fixture to the shade, it was ready for the rods that would line the outside of the drum shade. I bought 100 of these 48 inch dowels from Amazon for $55. I decided to cut five different lengths, 20″, 18″, 16″, 14″, and 12″, to make the random staggered pattern. From one stick I would make groups of lengths so I would have the least amount of waste. For instance I could get four 12″ pieces from one stick, one 20″ and two 14″ pieces on one, three 16″ on one, and two 18″ with one 12″. Once I had my cuts made, I affixed them to the shade using hot glue. I had to be careful not to go overboard with the glue or each stick wouldn’t sit flat next to each other. One tip, if you decide to make this, you need far less 20″ pieces compared to the other sizes. I used the 20″ piece once every 15 sticks or so. They were the absolute heights up and down 5″ from the 10″ shade, that way it didn’t get wonky and lopsided. There was no real pattern, I just eyeballed what I thought looked good and went freeform. Here’s how it looked after all the dowels were attached:

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