The Parkland Project: Let There Be LIGHTs!

Now that some of the rooms are starting to take shape we wanted to be whisked out of the 70s and back to modern day with our lighting. Now that most of the half bathroom (aka fish bathroom, aka poop bathroom) was finished, it was time to give this old light a little "upgrayedd" (sorry a little movie humor from Idiocracy with Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph).

Fun back story on these projects.

Before we could start working on any of the lights, we had to ~~scream~~ figure out our fuse box and what was actually on each fuse. Along with the history we've had with our previous owners, it was a doosey. After screaming back and forth for about an hour and checking outlets if they were still live, we seemed to have it down. Even though some fuses have multiple rooms on them and others seems to have just one outlet. Who knows who wired this place...

I chose the Portfolio 2-Light Vanity Bar light, only in stores and not online, from Lowes. I was very careful in choosing a size since the light socket is quite close to the window and I did not want it to hit the trim.

Max has some made major amateur electrical skills (he rewired my laptop when Turk ate the cord as a puppy) so he did all the heavy duty work. I just chose the pretties. I loved the way the brushed nickel would look with the gray and white of the room. Very neutral but not cold.

In case you need to know how to install a new light, here is a quick video courtesy of Home Depot.

Here you can see how close it really is to the window. I'm super glad I went with this one!

To personalize our bedroom a little more, I wanted to give Max a little bit of a sense that this is his home as well since I've been doing most of the decorating and color decisions. He loves paper lanterns so when I saw the VÄTE Pendant Light at my IKEA trip here, I knew it was perfect to make him feel more at home in his home. I grabbed a Hemma Cord Set and we were good to go!

Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of our before light, but it was basically a 70s wavy glass light cover with a few etchings on it. Not very cute.

He removed the face plate and we had a little trouble figuring out how to make this into a pendant light. There was a cross bar to hold the face plate to the ceiling but that was it.

When he cut the wires he noticed that they were double coated with casing. We split the outer white casing (that you see here). This is Max's "I'm concentrating very hard on this face". I see it a lot on the home repairs.

While he was working on the wires, I took the face plate for a little "upgrayedd" of it own (I can't help the humor from this cult hit, if you haven't rented it, do it!) I first peeled as much as I could off a super old 70s sticker that was on the face plate still. Having just a little residue on it, I sanded as much as I could down until the surface was smooth and no longer sticky. I gave it a quick wipe down with a damp cloth and dried it off. Then using Rust-Oleam's Ultra Cover Primer, I sprayed an even coat across. After that had dried I followed it up with two coats of Rust-Oleam's white glossy spray paint.

After the paint had dried, we used Gorilla glue to the outer casing we split to attach the pendant light to the face plate without putting stress on the actual electrical cords. Luckily, this is a paper lantern and does not weight much at all.