Makes you want to come and visit, huh? You are thinking that every time someone comes to visit us we put them to work, right? Well...they were willing and we took full advantage of their offer to help. This weekend's victims...my brother, Andy, and his girlfriend, Alysha. I laid low for the first part of the weekend due to some "special" bug that attacked my immune system on Friday. Sunday morning...let the projects begin. On the agenda, 1)install new kitchen light, 2) install dining room fan, and 3) priming paneling in our bedroom. I recently informed Chris that I am not now nor do I forsee ever being interested in or wanting to learn/do electrical work. Frankly, it scares me. Sure does. Too many steps, risk of death, and so on. I will do carpentry, painting, tiling, wallpaper removal, plumbing, TSPing (if forced), etc but not electrical. Therefore, Andy was Chris' able electrical assistant and joke-provider/laugher-at-Chris'-jokes.
First, Chris and Andy installed the new kitchen light. The glaring fluorescent glow of the old fixture was not...um, inducing homey feelings.
The new light gives a warm, amber-tinted glow and distinguishes the "Swiss Coffee" paint on the kitchen walls from the white ceiling. I knew the color fan book did not lie when I picked out the color for the kitchen in the first place.
Okay...I did think it lied but now I'm more educated on the influence lighting has. (Side note: Chris and I had picked out a color that we thought was a light gray to try out in our bedroom upstairs and when I brought the color fan book into a different room the next day I realized it was actually purple-ish pink. Ewww. Make sure you see it in all lights).
Second, Chris and Andy, fairly confident in their electrical skills by now, installed the new dining room fan. The old fan worked well (and is being donated not trashed) but blended into the ceiling and had the blinding effect...more for Chris due to his super-sized height. It was also a bit too small for the room. Here's a flash from living/dining rooms past...if you are new to the blog, check out the other living/dining room posts to see the transformation.
Now, Chris and I spent many trips to Menards, Lowes and Home Depot surveying our options when it came to new fans. I've watched way too many hours of HGTV in my "day " and I know people loathe ceiling fans. Decorators always try to replace them . I have concluded that: a) their projects take place in the winter or early spring and the homeowners have forgotten what summer is like, b) the homeowners have central a/c, c) they like tripping over plugged-in fans, d) they carry personal hand-held fans to cool themselves (or those misting battery-powered ones) at all times, e) they live in Alaska, f) they like to sweat, or g) all of the above. I will admit that getting rid of the dining room fan altogether crossed my mind when we bought our house...but then we moved in to our home sweet home IN AUGUST. No doubt about it...THE FAN STAYS. We have radiator-heat, no central a/c, do not like to sweat or carry little fans or trip over cords and have not forgotten what summer is like in Illinois. On our fan hunt, we were looking for something "pretty" with good lighting since the fan also provides the only hard-wired lighting for the living/dining area. We didn't really like the four separate-light style since they always seemed to be blinding you but we didn't love the "boob"-light style either. Then...drumroll...we stumbled across our new, beautiful, air-circulating beast equipped with four separate lights that point straight down so as not to blind you. It was on clearance (not too many fan sales in the winter I guess), it was the last one, 10 minutes later it was traveling home, 1 week later it was installed.
