Let There Be Light!

Our kitchen makeover is nearing its end.
We've shown how we changed out our countertops,
backsplash, sink and island top and surround.
This past weekend we tackled the lighting.
This is the light fixture that was here when we bought the house.

It was adequate,
but wasn't bright enough to my liking,
especially when something needed to be photographed for the blog.
Truth be told, it wasn't our style.

 Originally, I had planned to add commercial whisks,
and figure out how to create lights out of them,
but I had trouble finding them for the price I wanted to pay.
Then I happened upon these wire baskets at a local thrift store.
They seemed perfect for this application,
so I sanded them, and painted them white.
Over the weekend, we went to our big box store 
to look for cabinet knobs and found these...

 which we decided we couldn't live without.
They were a similar idea to the whisks and baskets,
but with the accompanying kits,
we knew we could complete the job ourselves,
without needing to hire an electrician.
Win-win!

Between the two of us,
we managed to take down the old fixture,
and put up the base for the new one.
It was a bit tricky,
as we couldn't get it to sit flat on the ceiling.
But Big K being who he is, figured it out.

The only other important part was figuring out
how low we wanted the lights to hang.
The excess wire was tucked into the base part
and the globes were screwed into the sockets.
We added vintage-looking lightbulbs,
and we were in business.
So easy!

The other light we changed out was over our beautiful new apron sink.
It was a recessed light,
which was so far away from the sink area,
that it didn't do much good.

 Now with the light a little closer to the action,
it's so much easier to see what you're doing.

 The kitchen is brighter and fresher and the place I want to be.
Even if I'm not cooking,
I feel so comfortable hanging out in the space we've created.

The kitchen really is the heart of the home,
and with this update project almost complete,
it'll stay that way a good, long time.