Home Remodeling... Er... Redecorating... Ah, Hell, I Smashed the Lamp

At our old apartment, we had more than enough lighting.  I guess we took for granted the 60's style ceiling lights, replete with gold flecks.  For the first couple of months we lived here, not every room even had a light.  In Madelyn's room we used a battery-operated camping lantern until a friend's daughter sold us one that's perfect for Mad's room.


One of Corey's gifts from Santa was a floor lamp.  He's pretty stoked about it. 


I might have been a little jealous.


In our bedroom, which about half the size of our old apartment, there is no ceiling light.  In fact, all we've had is a desk lamp sitting atop our dresser.  That 20-watter doesn't allow me to read at night, so I've become slightly addicted to games on my cell phone.  Scrabble anyone?


One thing we received was a gift card to Home Depot.  Now, we didn't buy a fixer-upper, but even so, there are about $15,000 worth of projects we'd like to get done around here.  Most of the big stuff is outside, and it's too cold to do much of it.  Inside, we can't see well enough to do anything.  At night, anyway.  We were pretty excited about the card.


This morning we headed over to our local HD and checked out their lamps (wohmps, as Mad calls 'em).  We found a cool table lamp.  Tonight I will be reading until I cain't read no mo'!

The other thing we found was a pendant light (yot, for those of you trying to translate Madelonian) to replace a rather hideous chandelier in what's supposed to be our formal dining area. 


Do we seem like formal people to you?  No?  Not to us, either. 


If we were, do you think this is what we'd have chosen?

The Before Picture

The only good thing about it is the photograph of Neil Young in the background... and without lights, you can't even tell how great it is.

So our plan was to pull the old one down and put the new one up, hopefully with as little trouble as possible.  Of course, nothing has gone smoothly for us since buying this home.  Here is the first in a series of "during" shots.

So much for our plan to sell this thing to someone with worse different taste than ours.

Who knew that the globes weren't attached other than if light bulbs were in place?  Okay, so you and everybody else knew.  Now we know.

To prove how hideous that thing was, here's how much better the area looks with a hole in the ceiling.

While I do have my doubts about whether or not we'll finish this without my dad's assistance, the doubts are waning.  Here's where we stand right now.

We've decided against setting up the dimmer feature.  Its a room with four bookcases.  And seriously, we're over dimly lit rooms.  Besides, we have zero electrical experience between us.

Well I'd love to show you more, but it's getting dark.