I think my favorite room in the new house, would be the kitchen - hands down. I've always wanted a large kitchen, and this house delivered! It's nice and open, so we have a clean slate to work with here. These are the old photos, so they still have the real estate agents staging stuff in there.
One of the things we want to do right away, is whitewash those beautiful open & tall ceilings. I love the look of wood, but in a light limited area, we need to do what we can to brighten it up in there. I think we'll whitewash the wood so we can still see the grain, but reflect a little more light down. One of our ideas was to eventually put lights in the eves. You can see where the wall meets the ceiling, there is a gap - perfect for lights to shine up and reflect down. So it went on the to-do list. Then something amazing happened...
Last week I was at the house taking care of little jobs, when I got the craving to hop up on the counters (I'm not a tall person!) and see if it's possible to even put lights
in there. Surprise! There was a lighting fixture in the eves! Not just one either, but 8! One in each section of the roof. I was so excited I yelled. However, no switch would turn on the lights, even with a fresh bulb. But hey, at least the wires are there, right? Then.... something amazing happened...
I was showing Ralph, to see if he could figure it out, and we were still stumped. As luck would have it, I happened to turn on a few light switches right as he did and BAM! Let there be light! We were so happy we ran to the hardware store to buy 7 more bulbs. Apparently, the lights have two switches, and both have to be turned on at the
same time.
Pfft! I'll turn on 10 switches at the same time if I have to, this is fantastic! I was so happy to see these there. I wish all projects got done that easily, we dreamt it up - planned it out, then all of a sudden it was done. Perfect! They add a lot of warm light to the room, and once that ceiling is whitewashed it will add even more. I'm extremely picky and sensitive with lighting, how it looks, where it's placed, the whole 9 yards. I can't wait to get some under cabinet lighting in there too, that will look incredible. Speaking of lighting, did you notice a certain light culprit in the photo above? Look at this bad decision:
Mmhmm. Not only is it just one of those standard hallway lights, but it's seriously 12 feet in the air... and the bulb is burned out {
ofcourse!}. I tried getting up on the very very top of the ladder {
I know, I know I shouldn't do that, so don't try that at home!} and I still can't comfortably reach, it's only a five foot ladder - give me a break! Anyway - the dead bulb is only half the problem, the other problem is I really don't like the fixture. It's too high for something so small, and I
know exactly what kind of light will shine down. That faraway, weird kind of light. Maybe I'm crazy, do you know what I mean though? So we're in brainstorm mode now, something bright, something big, and something fun since it's a huge space. One idea is a large wood "skeleton" cube, with a few bare bulbs inside:
I love the look of the wood! It would be great to make a really big one, or a hexagonal one... the other idea, is to find some wonderful old brass chandelier, preferably something wild from the 70's, and spray paint it some amazing color.
Maybe something along the Mission style side of things..
Thought we may be getting up there in the price, and after everything we've had to buy to just get in this place - it's a shoestring budget for me. I think for now we're leaning to the spray paint route, but we'll see. Stay tuned, I'm going to post the tutorial for that wooden cube light soon, isn't is awesome? Have a great weekend!
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