Conquered the light.

Ever since we painted our kitchen we’ve had zero lights up because we removed them to paint the ceilings. I’ve tried {and tried and tried} to get a pendant light hung above our kitchen sink for weeks. Every time I attempt it, I get stuck at step, lose patience, or some part of it won’t work. For instance, during my first attempt, part of the ceiling crumbled away, so I had to stop what I was doing to patch the ceiling. My second attempt it was too dark in the room to see which wires I wanted {since I had to turn off the electricity.} Third attempt, I got confused on which wire went where & was just so annoyed I gave up.

FINALLY, last night, I conquered the pendant light. Hallelujah!  It wasn’t even that hard for me last night…quite simple actually. It was definitely a wondrous thing that popped me right out of my overwhelmed mood.  And I quite possibly did a few fist pumps and touchdown signs in my kitchen once I flipped that breaker & saw the light! :)

Here’s what it looked light before I finished the final steps. You can see the plaster where I had to fix the hole earlier. I still have to sand & paint this part, but hey, I’m just pumped to have light.

 

And here it is completed. YEAH!

Yes, that’s Shout & Carpet cleaner. The pup hurled yesterday. Poor guy must’ve been rattled with all the work being done for our wet basement.

 

Got the glass cloche from Goodwill, cake stand leftover from a wedding event & those cute soaps in the metal holder from Bath & Body Works. The white pendant lamp was the brand “Portfolio” and came in only around seven bucks {cheap, I know!} on sale from Lowes, plus it included the shade too. See this post for more details on the light.

I was on such a roll, that I decided I could hang the curtains in our living room too. I’m sick of parading in front of our neighbors – this window faces the road & while there’s hardly any traffic, any passerby can see everything going on in our living room. Not to mention, my new Ikea curtains were screaming my name.

I had to use drywall anchors before the screws because the wall will not hold screws well, especially when any amount of weight was applied.

Once I inserted the anchors, it was a solid curtain rod. I made sure to have four brackets because when we moved in there were just three & this caused the rod to sag in the middle. Saggy middles are not cool. So here’s the final product sans curtains…

 

When I got the curtains out of the package, I realized i picked up two different types of curtains – ones with tabs and ones with out. So I went with the Ikea clips & simply folded the tabs down, added the clips, and hung ‘em up. And you know what, you can’t even tell they’re tab curtains!

I went with kaki color on the outside and white in the middle. I may paint a design on the kaki ones, but that’s still TBD.

Bad, dark pictures, sorry. Here’s a close up of the linen texture in the curtains. For $15 a pop, I’m totally pleased – tons of fabric, thick and quality fabric too.

 

And I also swapped out this muddy, dirty, very used entry way rug…

 

For this brand new one…

Ah, much better.  It felt so good to actually accomplish something for the house, by myself, without needing help. It’s been a while since I’ve had time to do any big work on the place, so this was just the pick-me-up I needed yesterday.