Sprucing Up the Upstairs Landing

This has been our light on the upstairs landing for the past 8 months. The single, naked light bulb wasn't really doing that terrific of a job.

His replacement really brightens up the landing. Plus, it matches the chandelier in the downstairs front hallway.

And it came with a free light that will probably make its way into one of the bedrooms that have a single, naked bulb doing a poor job of lighting up the room.

It's a nice change! Now... I just need to paint the ceiling, finish the banister, and put pictures up on those sad, empty walls...

Kitchen Fans

We replaced both lights in our kitchen with matching ceiling fans. The kitchen is on the corner of the house that gets the most sun. Consequently, it is especially warm on that corner of the house during the summer. Ceiling fans should help the kitchen be a comfortable place to work in year round.

Plus, the Professor kept hitting his head on this light:
And he was offended by the fact that he couldn't use fluorescents with the light. I'm not sure what the plan for this light is. I may spray paint it because I don't really like yellow brassiness. We're going to have quite a collection of older lights and I'm going to have to figure out what to do with them. We do have a lot of bare light bulbs hanging out upstairs - so some of them may go up there.

And here is the ceiling fan we replaced. It wasn't too bad, but it definitely needs to be cleaned. It may be used in a bedroom upstairs or it may get retired. We're not sure yet.

The Professor put the fans together:

We chose the ceiling fan because the blades match our cabinets perfectly:

The body of the lamp matches the hardware of the cabinets:

Now both lights in the kitchen/back entry area are the same:

I think the matching ceiling fans help to tie the two rooms of the kitchen area together. The lights won't be as yellow once we get some fluorescents in them.

The pull chains even let you know which is which:Aren't they cute?

Illuminating the Front Hall

This was the light in our front hallway:
It was small, dinky, & left the bulb bare.

It was rusty and kind of gross.

The Professor had already replaced the rusty, dinky light that didn't really illuminate the hall with the snazzy new light by the time I got home from work this evening. It was such a nice surprise!

A pretty surprise. Oo La La.

It lights up the whole hallway like crazy! Which is great because it means we can see in the hall now. On the other hand, it means I can see all of the dust... and the cracks & bad paint job of the ceiling... So I guess that's just more motivation to fix it all when I'm allowed to paint again.

I'll have to take some daytime pictures sometime after I've cleared out and cleaned the hallway... In about... oh... say... 2 or 3 months.

Photoshop Fun: New Lighting

The Professor is pretty handy when it comes to photoshop. We were trying to figure out what we should replace some of our downstairs lighting with and he photoshopped in a few options:

Kitchen Option 1:
Kitchen Option 2:
Kitchen Option 3:
We decided on Option 3 for the kitchen for several reasons. The dark brassy look goes with our hardware, the style goes well with our house, and the fan is a dark enough reddish color that it goes with our cabinets.

Then we're thinking of replacing our dinky little light in the big front hallway with this:I'm so excited!