Personally, I'm a self proclaimed bargain hunter. My friends know as me as shrewd negotiator, always on the hunt for a deal, and never wavering in my desire to achieve big budget looks at bottom dollar pricing. I understand that there may be a time and place to pay full price, but that time and place usually isn't one where I'll be found! 

Over the last several years, as we've been establishing our decor style and preferred aesthetic in our Foursquare on the water, I've been deal hunting and stock piling. Whether we're talking antiques, light fixtures, textiles, art work, or accessories, I have a mental plan for our home and I'm always looking for items that would fill the gaps in this style.

In a nutshell, we're going for a "coastal farmhouse with antique accents" vibe, primarily because our home is an historic coastal farmhouse (go figure, embracing both the age and style of the house in its decor). As I've found decor items that fit with this style, and they happen to be a good price, either by happenstance or shrewd negotiating will, I pick them up for later use. 

This tactic is precisely how we've ended up with several hanging fixtures for our home, all occupying space in their boxes in the attic. The themes of each are consistent with the others. Lots of light browns with natural wood, some with a gray weathered appearance, textured fabric like burlap, glass globes or domes with plenty of imperfections, and rough traditionally nautical rope accents. Here are just a few examples of my hoard.

Once such instance in which a lonely low cost but beachingly charming light fixture looking for a good home found me was on a trip to the Restoration Hardware Outlet in Leesburg, Virginia. It's actually in the box at the bottom of this photo. Yes, that says "BASURA" on the box, but I could see this fixture was far from trash!

Within the box was an apparently perfect looking Cruz Burlap Pendant fixture from RH Teen. Not only is it a burlap covered drum shade, the black metal accents and the large twisted nautical style rope was perfect for our house. While the regular price, still available on the website today, is $249, the outlet price for this light, an amazing $45!! It would have been a tragedy to NOT buy it!

So I purchased it, tucked it away in the attic, and began planning for the day we'd be able to install it as our dining room chandelier, even though our dining room renovation was still a ways off. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that this new light bumped the large glass light from the earlier photo in this post. This is a case where deals give you options.

Fast forward a little over one year, our dining room renovation began in late 2017 and has progressed to the point where the plaster is restored, everything is painted, and we're ready to install our light fixture. We excitedly pulled the box marked Basura from the attic and began the glorious unboxing process. We knew the rope that supported the fixture was a bit too long and would need to be reduced in length, but that didn't seem like that big of a deal.

We figured we'd pop the box open, adjust the length, and then install the light. Much to our chagrin, when we broke this light out and looked over the assembly, there wasn't an obvious option to adjust the length of the rope. The shade itself is 14", the rope comes standard at 36", and when you include all of the mounting hardware you're looking at a total fixture height of about 56". When you have a normal height ceiling, say 9' like in our home, that puts the mounting height of this fixture at a solid 4' off the ground. 

We hunted around the RH website and eventually determined that the length of this rope, and the light fixture as a whole, was intentionally not adjustable. How dumb is that? You basically needed to have a vaulted ceiling or something similar that offers about 13'-14' ceiling height. No wonder it was so cheap at the outlet (but doesn't explain why it's still for sale full price on the website).

As we dug into our options we decided the only acceptable path forward for our needs was to alter the light's rope length. Alex was confident we'd be able to figure it out, so we started doing one of the things we know best, taking it apart.

The rope assembly is pretty simple. It consists of about a dozen or so small cotton strings twisted into three pairs of thicker ropes, that are then twisted together around a central black plastic wire. The wire is essentially what holds the weight of the fixture, and the rope is more decorative than anything. As you can see in the above photo, the wire is pinched in place by a set screw within the mounting hardware. But once the set screw was loosened, we couldn't remove the rope from the metal housing. Undeterred, we started hacking at it, cutting the rope but being careful not to cut the wire.

Once we'd begun freeing the rope from the housing we slowly started to see how it was put together.

The interior of the metal housing has three screws mounted towards the center that act as a sort of cleat around the rope. There's also a metal wire that wraps around the top of the rope that holds onto the metal screws and keeps the rope in place. 

While we tried to figure out how to handle reassembly we wrapped some duct tape around the top of the rope to make sure the twist stayed in place. I certainly didn't want the whole thing falling apart while we were fooling around with a plan, and this twisted rope tends to want to unravel when nothing is holding it.

At first glance, it seemed like this should be easy. The housing and hook at the top are obviously two pieces, one that threads into the other. Alex took his tools to the mounting loop and tried to loosen up the two pieces. If we could get them apart, we'd just need to trim to length, slide the housing over the end of the rope, wrap the end of the rope in a new piece of wire, and thread it all back together again. But things are rarely that easy. It seemed like there was a bunch of super glue adhesive on the two pieces that essentially cemented them together within the threads. At the very least, we had ourselves a broken disassembled light fixture. 

Alex tried to soften the adhesive by allowing it to sit in a cup of mineral spirits for a while. Unfortunately, that did nothing.

After we made several valiant attempts at separating the two pieces we decided to go back to the drawing board. Since we couldn't get the pieces apart, I suggested shortening the whole thing and then trying to fit the rope back into the housing. Alex noted that the whole fixture is actually supported by the wire more than it is the rope, so this might be able to work if we could get the wire past the three screws.

Before we could shorten things we needed to figure out the correct height based on our table. Without shortening anything the light was practically on the table.

Obviously, this wouldn't work. The ideal height of a chandelier above your dining table is supposed to be 30"-34" for an 8' ceiling, with an additional 3" per one foot of ceiling height. So that means 33"-37" for our table.

After we broke out the tape measure, Alex held the fixture at the desired height while I viewed things from the table to make sure it looked good while seated and while standing in the next room.

Once we had what we felt was an ideal height we quickly marked the cut line with some painters tape, then with some sharpie.

Before we actually made the cut we started to unravel the rope. With nothing holding it together the rope was almost trying to unravel itself.

When we got close to the cut mark, but before cutting, we placed a few pieces of duct tape on the pieces of rope just above and below the cutline to hold things together, then Alex cut each section of rope individually.

After removing the necessary length of rope and setting it aside, Alex trimmed the wire's length to also work better with the new height. He left the wire about 12" longer than the end of the rope to give enough length into the electrical box.

Reassembly was actually pretty simple. We made sure to wrap the rope tightly around the central wire, then ran the wire up through the center of the upper housing.

Now the somewhat tricky part, getting the rope back into the housing. Alex took the length of wire and wrapped it tightly around the top of the rope. We also left the duct tape on the very top of the rope twists just to keep everything together. The second ring of duct tape was just holding everything in place and was positioned to be removed after the rope was firmly in the housing.

Inserting the rope into the housing was a matter of twisting the housing onto the rope in a counter clockwise manner. While Alex twisted, the metal wire was able to move over the screws and then securely seat within the housing. 

Once fully seated Alex pulled the remainder of the wire through the collar and then secured the set screw to hold everything in place.

Following a bit of nervousness where we worried we possibly wouldn't get it back together, we were in business and ready to mount the chandelier in the dining room. We test fit by hanging it in place and admired our handy work. We'd conquered the "fixed length" chandelier rope, take that RH Teen!

Everything was looking good so we went ahead and hooked up the wiring. My bargain find of only $45 did end up taking us about two extra hours to install due to the need to hack it apart a little. Ultimately we both feel like this should have been an adjustable height fixture. It wouldn't have been difficult to make changes if RH hadn't glued the threads on the housing. For whatever reason, they did, which meant we needed to do a little adjusting. The end result is exactly the look we were hoping for, and for pretty much exactly the amount of money I was interested in paying.

Seriously, $45, you can't beat that bargain! I feel like I've been getting pretty good at finding deals, especially on lighting and rugs. From HomeGoods to true outlet shopping and antique shops, there are many deals to be found out there. What do you think? Do you have a few places in mind that are your absolute go to locations for scoring great decor deals? Have any secrets you want to share? We'd love to hear!

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After removing the drywall covering the original plaster in the room, which also allowed us to remove the hated wallpaper border, we turned our attention to the all important aspects of a lighting and electrical plan, as well as wall repair. I know, it's totally sexy stuff!

First up, let's take a look at our lighting. When we bought our home the room had just one source of light via the dark and dated ceiling fan/light combo. Though we added lamps for a bit of additional light in the corner, the amount of light in the room always felt very flat, harsh, and especially gloomy in the evening and at night. Couple that with too few outlets placed in odd locations and at variable heights in the room, and we had several straight forward electrical items to tackle.

To remedy the insufficient and uninspiring lighting we're seizing this opportunity to not only add a recessed light in each of the four corners of the room, but also to correct a major oversight/pet peeve of mine in the room. Can you spot the issue in the next photo?

No? It doesn't immediately jump out at you? The truth is, it actually didn't jump out at us either. if you don't see it here's a hint.

Now you see it, don't you? You probably can't un-see it either, and it may even eat at you like it ate at us! The light/fan was mounted about 8" off of the center of the room. And...it took us about two years to actually notice it, but once we saw it...it was all that we could see. It's like noticing that the space between the "E" and the "X" in the Fedex logo actually makes a not-so-subtle arrow. Try looking at a Fedex truck on the highway and not seeing that now. You're welcome.

After we purchased our home we realized the old fan was not mounted with a supported junction box appropriate to support a ceiling fan. As a result and in anticipation of eventually replacing that fan with a chandelier, Alex ran new electrical to a new properly supported junction box in the ceiling, but he ran it to the same place where the old one was mounted. Keep in mind, this was way back in late 2015 when Alex was working to plug holes from old radiator lines before we got our floors refinished. We realized the wires were run by pulling up flooring rather than putting holes in the ceiling, so it was an easy thing to handle since the floors were about to be refinished anyway.

About a year and a half later, sometime in early 2017, we were standing in the kitchen daydreaming about what our plans for the dining room might be and we made the horrifying discovery that the new junction box...in the very same location as the old junction box...wasn't properly centered in the room! I'm not sure how we missed it (perhaps the fruit border served as a distraction), but we knew the current location wasn't something we could live with when we ultimately redid the space. We were absolutely kicking ourselves! Leaving it put meant either the chandelier wouldn't be centered over the table, or the table wouldn't be centered in the room if we chose to align it with the new light fixture. 

Had we realized this issue back when we ran the new wire and box, Alex could have easily accounted for the eventual need to move it by leaving a little slack in the wire, but he hadn't, so he's been beating himself up about it, obsessing, and dreading the need to get back into the ceiling to run a new wire. Honestly, there are few things that Alex does better than getting into his is own head and obsessing about projects, but I had confidence we could figure it out.

Leading up to the start of this room's renovation we've had heated discussions. We've fretted. We've agonized. And, we slowly accepted the fact that when we started the work in this room we'd have to either cut out a section of the ceiling to run a new wire, or we'd need to pull up our beautiful, original, and carefully refinished hardwood floors in the hallway and bedroom above to correct the ceiling light placement issue. 

Ultimately we decided that pulling up a section of the floor (just like we'd done before) would be less invasive. (I was still on the fence, but since Alex heads up our electrical projects I deferred to him on this front.) In three separate visits, we slowly worked to pry up individual boards to give us access to the wire and locations needed, all the while attempting to leave the finish of the floor as intact as possible.

Alex carefully scored the lines between the board to allow the finish to naturally fracture on the division, rather than pulling finish off of neighboring boards as the floor was pulled up. Then he slowly slid the pry bar beneath the flooring while protecting the adjacent board with cardboard. The only reason this was possible is because the underside of the floor board's groove had already been removed, so it was only a matter of freeing the nails.

The good news was that we were able to access the wire after pulling up only three boards, and Alex did it so carefully that we were able to achieve our goals without damage to the board or the finish. The other good news was that once we opened up the floor, we saw that there was enough slack in the wire that between the two of us, we were able to carefully extend the wire far enough to safely reach the location of the new junction box just 8" further into the room. Score! 

In addition to addressing the location of the ceiling light, Alex spent time running electrical to a few new outlets and correcting old outlet and switch junction boxes that were haphazardly punched through the plaster behind the drywall. The old outlets were all installed at different heights and because of the drywall over the plaster, tended to wiggle around in the wall when inserting or removing a plug. Not exactly confidence inspiring.

What we've found is that when plaster is compromised (any cracking or crumbling, especially with holes too large) it tends to be pretty horrible when it comes to supporting junction boxes. When in this situation we like to cut back the plaster a sufficient amount and then patch in a little drywall with a hole for the junction box. This allows us to support the new junction box while tying it in with the plaster around it.

This is the same approach we took where the prior outlet holes were a complete mess. Once you have the patch fitting nicely all that's left is to screw the drywall to the supporting lath.

The final electrical item we handled was placing and installing the four recessed lights. We'd run dead wires to the rough locations back in 2015 so it was just a matter of marking where we wanted the lights and cutting holes where necessary. To ensure an accurate and consistent placement in each corner we used a cross laser line to plot out each location before making the cut.  

In choosing the location we opted to place these lights much closer to the walls than you may normally see. This was completely intentional (though we questioned our approach several times while we were making the decision). I know recessed lighting can be a polarizing lighting choice, especially in an old home. But we feel that recessed lights add a wonderful layered lighting look. But recessed lighting can also be really annoying if they shine into the eyes of you or your guests when they are seated. In a dining room you certainly want to keep any recessed lighting away from spotlighting your dining table guests, so putting the lights near the wall will highlight the perimeter of the room rather than illuminating your guests. 

After marking the first spot we were able to use that spot to move the laser to the next location and mark the next spot. If we'd had two lasers we could have done it all in one fell swoop, but we only had the one so it took a little longer.

As you can see from the next photo we were able to position the four lights and to get them installed, as well as to get the chandelier moved to the center of the room before moving forward on the wall repair. Installing recessed lighting, especially low voltage LED recessed lighting is a pretty straight forward proposition if you have access to run wiring to the location. You'll certainly need to confer with local codes and restrictions if you want to tackle this work yourself, but it's certainly a DIYable endeavor.

Finally, before we could really move forward on the plastering project we had to patch in any missing plaster. When we do this work we cheat a little. While we're trying to preserve as much of the original plaster as possible, anywhere that we're missing plaster we'll patch in with half inch drywall over the lath before skimming it with plaster.

This can sometimes be a frustrating process that requires a good deal of patience, but when it's all in place you'll never know just how bad the wall looked at one point. You certainly end up with strange looking drywall scraps when you're trying to patch areas like those around our French doors.

The most important aspect of this work is to ensure the drywall is solid, secure, and just slightly below or right at the level of the surrounding plaster. We also prefer using smaller pieces to get an accurate fit rather than trying to use a single large piece. In this case we also used some surplus green board we had on hand that just happened to be the right size, but either green board or standard drywall is fine as long as you're properly preparing it to accept plaster.

Once all is said and done, but before plaster can start, you do need to treat the drywall with a bonding agent that will allow the plaster to properly adhere to the drywall paper. We'll go into more detail on this process and our progress when it comes to plastering in our next post. 

What do you think of the progress we're making? And how much would an off center chandelier bother you? We're rolling right along and can't help but feel extremely excited about what this room will become. We're still on the hunt for a great antique farmhouse dining table with tons of character, and I'm not sure if we'll finish the room before finding it or not. It's certainly a race to the finish.

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Earlier this year, after arriving home from work, I noticed something just didn't look right on the side of our house. After pausing and inspecting more carefully, I realized that the wire holder above our main service head had pulled out of the house, evident by the dangling anchor and gaping hole in our masonry. Alex covered it at length during one of his venting blog posts back when it occurred and received a lot of very helpful advice from everyone. Here's a photo of what it looked like when it was still attached.

Back when we first discovered the issue, Alex contacted our power company, who after paying us a visit advised us that we needed to install a new heavy duty wire holder on the side of the house in order for them to reattach the wires, thus correcting the problem. The helpful power company employee instructed us that unfortunately due to liability issues, we'd need to install the wire holder ourself (or hire someone to do it). Hmm. This presented some challenges given the location is at the middle of our second story, and the fact we don't have a 20 foot extension ladder. I also have a panic attack when my husband is up in high, unsecured places given his penchant for roof diving. (If it were an Olympic sport, he'd be a leading contender, I'm sure.)

So, in good form, we ignored the problem for a good five months, knowing we needed to address it at some point in the near future. Granted, the power company employee did say, "You know, it really doesn't have any stress on it, so there's no rush to correct it right now." Life went on, we were happy, but it was always a project nagging in the back of our minds.

Fast forward to two weeks ago, a mere 30 minutes before we were set to leave for our trip to Germany. In the whirlwind of packing, making sure everything was wrapped up before or trip, and general last second pre-vacation craziness, Alex discovered that the wires had pulled further away from our house, leaving them in a very precarious situation. 

Left uncorrected, we now ran the risk that they would pull away while we were thousands of miles away, potentially taking down our electricity (including our websites and Mel's air conditioned pad), or worst case, sparking and igniting our home or electrocuting a neighbor or pedestrian.

As unappealing as it was to envision returning to a lump of smoldering ashes, we had limited options:

1. Run around like crazed lunatics, frantically searching for the wire holder we had waiting for this project. "Borrow" a ladder from a neighboring construction site, and rush to complete the work while we should be en route to Dulles airport. 
2. Beg and plead for a neighbor to keep an eye on the situation, and if it worsened, said neighbor was instructed to call for backup.
3. Do nothing. Leave for the airport, cross our fingers, and hope the house didn't burn down.

Well, Alex gave number one his all. At 35 minutes past our agreed airport departure time, sweating profusely and as frantic as I've ever seen him, he finally conceded that the wire holder must have been thrown out or was hiding in our disaster of a basement. 

While my preference was option three, I knew Alex wouldn't do well with that so we opted to go with number two. Alex quickly made arrangements while we waited to board the flight and got to a point where he felt just barely at the edge of okay with leaving the house in its fragile state. Truthfully I can't remember a time when I've seen him so completely agitated. Normally he's the perfect low key yin to my high strung yang, but if given the option to pull open the emergency hatch en route to Germany, I think he would have jumped at the chance. He was convinced our ten years of loving restoration and renovation would all be destroyed. He talked about it throughout the vacation, breathing only half a sigh of relief each time we looked in on our cat cam. (A webcam we have set up to check in on Mel as well as augment our home security.) We knew as long as the webcam was on and we could see the house, then it hadn't yet burned to the ground.

As soon as we returned, Alex made it priority number one to remedy the situation. After several more fruitless hours of searching for the elusive wire holder (What? In our amazingly organized hell hole of a basement? You don't say!) he finally agreed that we'd have to purchase a new wire holder. He headed out to several home improvement stores before he was able to find the specific wire holder we needed. He then asked (and received) permission to borrow the long ladder from a neighboring job site.

While he prepped to do the work, I made a call to the power company explaining the situation. After speaking with a customer service rep that was the antithesis of customer service, I was told we were put on the "priority list" and someone would be out shortly.

With ladder and supplies in tow, as well as a strong friend on hand for extra ladder support, Alex ascended nearly 20 feet into the air to install the new wire holder, patch the hole left from the old screw using appropriate mortar, and take care of a few siding maintenance issues. 

, 
A photo of our helpful friend, just working on a different part of the wall.

He made several trips up and down, making me contemplate popping a few Imodium to deal with my growing paranoia, but despite my fears he successfully completed the work without injury, and exactly...let me repeat that, EXACTLY, in the manner that the power company employee had instructed him to complete it several months earlier. 

They had said, "Place the new wire holder about three inches to the left of the old location and we'll just put a new support wire on it and hook it right up."

So we were ready to go, but the next problem was...no one from the power company showed up. Nightfall came and went, and Sunday morning rolled around. Still, no service. At one point at about 10:00am Alex saw a power company van drive up to our house, stop, and the technician look at our house before driving away. Not a good sign. 

By Sunday afternoon, we started to lose hope. As a last ditch effort I picked up the phone and hoped to contact someone who seemed to care a little more about helping than the last person. Though a bit more helpful, it was notable that this new agent had some interesting information. I was told that not only was our case not deemed an emergency, but there's no such thing as a "priority list," and in other words, they'd get to us when they got to us. Super.

As the afternoon set in, Alex started to take his frustration out on the Twitterverse in a constructive use of his IT resources, madly tweeting photos and messages to the power company. Though Twitter is often a very efficient location to receive expedited customer support, in this instance and much to Alex's dismay, we received no response. We had completed our end of the deal and the forecast called for thunderstorms with high wind the next day. Alex feared the worst, and he was relatively certain a moderate gust of wind would cause our service line to come crashing down, so as darkness fell and he had lost almost all hope, he called the power company one final time.

However, this time he was connected to a genuinely kind and helpful person on the other end. After a few minutes on the phone not only had he established the true urgency of the situation, but the person on the other end was able to inform him that a tech was being dispatched under an emergency order and should arrive later in the evening. Perfect! Perhaps this story would have a happy ending after all? Well, let's not go getting ahead of ourselves.

Well into the darkness of the evening, at about 8:00ish, Alex noticed the flashing strobe lights of the power company truck preparing to pull into our alley. Moments later there was a knock at our door and Alex bounced outside to inform the service tech of just what we were dealing with. I breathed a sign of relief knowing how much this concerned Alex and how he'd be able to finally sleep better.

Moments later Alex returned to the house, but the smile I expected simply wasn't present on his face. Instead, it was replaced with a furrowed brow and general look of anger mixed with frustration. I hesitantly inquired as to the reason behind this sudden change in attitude, knowing full well it wasn't something that I really wanted to hear.

Alex informed me, "Well, he looked at the anchor, you know the one I installed specifically according to the instructions of the previous tech, about three inches to the left of the old location, and this guy said, 'Why'd you install the anchor so far away? I can't hook that up there.' Can you believe it!?!?"

Now, you may not know Alex as well as I do, but this was not something that he was very happy to hear, and I could tell it wasn't really sitting well with him. Well, scratch that, what he had heard and had just repeated to me, well, he had been transformed into a bit of a mini rage volcano, almost ready to blow. Trying to stay calm, he excused himself form the situation and began pacing around the house.

In my attempts to be the level headed and even tempered half of our home improvement duo, I put aside the fact that we had spent an hour in the heat installing the new wire holder on a borrowed ladder precisely per the instructions of the previous tech. I assumed there'd be no way he would disregard our efforts and completed work. I expected he'd somehow alter the install to work within the boundaries that we'd set, especially since three separate people had informed us that the power company will not, under any circumstances, install wire holders on the sides of houses, you know, for liability purposes.

That's when it happened. The service tech was out there moving our wire and determining how best to install the loop when the main service wire pulled free form the side of the house and fell across another wire extending from our home. This proved our concern. He'd barely touched the wire and there it was, draped across the alley in a dangerous and precarious position. Well, now what?

The next several minutes were a blur of confusion, frustration, and he sound of a drill repeatedly drilling into our home's masonry. He had ignored our new wire holder and went ahead and installed the old one in a completely different location than the first. Rather than drilling into mortar and using an appropriate anchor, he drilled into the center of our bricks to seat the screws. Alex ran outside to offer up additional anchors we had on hand and to ask the tech to use those, but it was too late, the work was complete. He had installed a new wire holder, secured the top of the service head to the house, and even installed three additional supports down the wire, once again drilling holes in the bricks as he went.

I couldn't believe it, Alex couldn't believe it, the tech was interested only in finishing the job as quickly as possible, didn't ask our opinion or how we wanted to do the work, and had essentially vandalized the house by putting five holes in our historic brick. Let's just say, it wasn't a particularly happy evening.

As I said, throughout the drama and chaos, all I could come up with was, "Well, at least our house didn't burn down."

Fast forward to today, the morning after, and we can look at the completed work and say, "Yes, the wire is secure, we don't need to worry about the coming storm, and we don't need to worry about it falling." However, the holes in the brick, employees that weren't helpful, tech that impatiently did what he wanted without consulting us, as homeowners, and then essentially ignored Alex's plea from the ground all combined to leave a very sour taste in our mouths. We'll now need to remove the anchor that Alex installed, somehow caulk the top of the new anchor and bolts to prevent any water infiltration through the holes of the bricks, and always watch the wire for fear they we'll have a repeat. But the thing that bothers both of us more than anything is the inconsistent nature of the messages we receive. If they were going to ultimately install new items, why tell us it was against company policy and have us do it the "wrong" way?

Today, we're exhausted from a long weekend of hard work. We're tired from having to deal with this ridiculous lack of respect (in our opinion). And we're tired of feeling like we just can't expect anyone to do a job right when we aren't doing it ourselves. So I think we're just frustrated and grumpy. I hope you had a better weekend!

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Gone are the days of a single light fixture hanging in the center of the room to provide all of your down lighting, task lighting, and accent lighting. All a single central light provides is a wonderful way to make your room look flat and boring, and your guests featureless and unattractive.

While looking through the various DIY projects online, and also perusing the professional renovation jobs in magazines and portfolio websites, I noticed just how important it is to mix the various lighting sources in every room. This approach is the only way to properly provide that complex and layered look in lighting that makes a finished room look professionally done and "high end". They say to layer textures and fabrics for visual interest, but layering lighting is just as important.

Throughout our renovation we've played with several different types of lighting. Though we are by no means lighting designers, we have gotten to the point where we are fairly comfortable with selecting the various lighting choices that will be necessary for each room. Wendy is quite good on the aesthetic comprehension of how a room will look in the after when we are still very much in the before. I'm able to play the roll of Chico to Wendy's inner Candice Olsen by providing ideas for execution of her vision, assessment of possibilities, and ultimately the install of the lighting.

Take a look at our master bedroom before and after. It went from a room with the only light provided by a few small and dim bedside lamps...

...To a room with a central chandelier, multiple recessed fixtures at each point of interest, and more substantial and nicer bedside lamps.

The key to this look is the addition of recessed lighting to provide the visual interest and additional light necessary, while also using more traditional fixtures where they are expected.

Over the years we've used several different styles and brands of recessed and down lighting. From $30 puck lights in the kitchen, to small and easy to install low voltage recessed pucks in the office desk. We've used $400 per unit 3" halogen Lightolier fixtures in the bathroom and office ceiling (don't worry, I think I paid $60 on an eBay find, no way I'm paying the full price), and installed a very inexpensive 4" fixture and LED conversion in the basement stairwell.

In other words, we've tried and installed everything from the very high end and expensive to the very entry level budget fixtures. What's the best part about this depth of knowledge and experiences? Sharing our experiences with you, of course! 

Several years ago I saw an episode of This Old House (the Nantucket Bay season I believe) where the lighting designer was talking about accent and down lighting. She mentioned how the fixture she was using was particularly nice because the lamp (bulb) sat inside the fixture and you could control the angle and wash of the light pool very specifically. She also made particular mention that you couldn't see the lamp rating tag inside of the fixture when looking up, and when you needed to replace the buld, your angle settings weren't lost during re-lamping. I thought this sounded perfect to me so I did a little research and scored a great bargain on eBay from a builder with surplus.

I picked up a couple of these Lightolier Calculite MR-16 fixtures and they ended up being very "as advertised." Easy to install, reliable, configurable, etc. But at $250-$400 regular price, there's no way we could use them unless we got really lucky on eBay.

The next time we needed light, I thought "how different can these super expensive ones be to the mid range lights?" We did a little research and were able to determine the lighting brand Candice Olsen likes to use in her projects. After a little digging, we found that she uses products from a company called EuroFase.

Our local lighting supply store could order this brand, but it came in about $175-$200 per fixture which is a bit ridiculous in our book. Again we went to the Internet for help, and Google didn't fail me. We were able to find a sketchy supplier (more on that in a second) that stocked and sold the 3" EuroFase recessed lights we needed for about $45 per fixture including the trim components.

I say sketchy because the Internet store is now mysteriously gone, and each time we ordered something from them we ended up with a strange charge on our bill for some sort of a subscription for weight loss pills. Hopefully it was fraud and not a friend or family member trying to tell use we were fat and needed to drop some lbs. At any rate, we changed our card and got the charges dropped. Quite a hassle, but we got a good deal on lighting out of it.

The lights we received we installed in our bedroom without any issue. They weren't quite as easy to install and setup as the super expensive ones, and the construction wasn't quite as refined, but it wasn't difficult by any means and they were a good quality product.

To secure them in place you just need to slide a few clips into their correct location and tighten a few set screw. The minor issues we've had with them along the way are nuisance issues, like the fact that they overheat and shut off (only one or two of seven) after long periods of leaving them on, and some of the converters have gone bad and needed to be replaced. I must say, the tech support/customer service was great and sent out replacement parts free of charge and in ample quantity. I was able to resolve our issue, but it did require more electrical work.

The final type of recessed lighting we tried was a simple $17 can light from one of the big box stores. I expected it to go smoothly because of the other two, but it didn't. The construction of this light is not like the others. No set screws to secure them, and just a few clips that were nearly impossible to push into place. Once in place, if I ever have a problem with the light that requires its removal, we're going to have an issue and may damage the ceiling.

In all, I was disappointed with the quality of the inexpensive option, but I guess you get what you pay for. I do have to say the 4" LED Sylvania conversion is pretty nice and works quite well. I would buy that again if necessary.

So what's the point of this post? Beyond sharing my experience, we're starting to look into lighting for our master bathroom. I know we'll be doing a few sconces next to a mirror behind the vanity, but we'll also be doing some recessed lighting above the shower, tub, and main areas of the room. We're going to be going back to the Eurofase lighting since we liked it for the bedroom, but we'll probably be making a few changes in size and technology. As we make a few decisions we'll keep you posted on them and our thought processes.

We'd also love to hear about experiences you've had with recessed lighting in your projects. We want to hear the good, bad, and even the ugly.

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This is an example of something you don't ever want to hear from a home inspector when referring to the property you and your significant other have poured your heart, soul, and your financial past, present and future into. But back in the winter of 2004, that was exactly what we were told. I can't even begin to explain the sinking feeling that struck us to our core when we heard that. 

What started as a suspect drip of liquid coming from a heat register in our sun porch had quickly revealed itself as massive water, termite and structural damage to the rear of our 1880s Victorian. As we detailed earlier this week, we had just finished a great looking budget renovation to our kitchen and were starting to gain some DIY confidence when this disaster struck. 

In a matter of what felt like minutes, our kitchen had gone from dated 1980s bachelor pad...

...to light and bright thanks to a budget reno...

...to our worst nightmare.

After hiring a reputable home inspector to diagnose the situation, as well as a reputable contractor to install an LVL structural beam and concrete footers to support the whole thing (since this 1890s addition was built right on dirt and had no foundation), we had exhausted what little savings we had and were therefore left alone to put the pieces back together. 

But let's be honest, even if we had the money in the bank, I'm sure Alex would have wanted to do it all ourselves.

"So where do we go from here?" was something we asked ourselves time and time again as we stood in the shell of a room that was once our kitchen and sun porch. As we looked around, icy winter air poured in through the gaping holes in the side of our home that we had duct taped over, chilling not only our bones but our burning desire to be DIYers. They may say a little duct tape will fix anything, but it wasn't working very well to keep the cold out.

This room's lack of ceiling, walls, electrical, in some places floor, insulation, and safe wiring left a lot to be desired. We knew we had a lot of work to accomplish, a learning curve to tackle, and an inspection to pass in a short six month period before our permit expired. But at least we were getting an opportunity to open up some walls and see the long hidden secrets of our home. (That's my attempt at a silver lining.)

We kicked things off with the electrical work. First up was determining the location of our new outlets and switches. We started by trying to figure out where we needed switches and outlets for the current kitchen, and perhaps where we might need them if we ever pursued our grand plan of swapping the locations of the kitchen and family room.  

Alex is my electrician, and he's a pretty good one at that. He learned the basics from a master electrician in college and has been able to apply that wonderful knowledge to our home. While working on this project we removed all of the dangerous old mishmash of wires, covered sub panels, and in wall splices to produce a safe and organized installation that will serve the room now and in the future.

With the necessary electrical run, the project quickly took a turn down overkill lane. I'm not quite sure what happened, nor do I remember the conversation where he said "I'm going to buy 1000' of CAT-6 network cable, Coax video cable, and speaker wire and run it all over the house, are you cool with that?" but somehow it happened. My lovely husband was bringing our 19th century row house into the 21st century, and I was an innocent spectator to the mess. Looking back on the photo below, I don't know how the neat freak in me survived when our house was a complete and total disaster. I think I have a case of hives coming on just looking at these photos.

No, seriously. He had bundles of wires everywhere!

We decided to use our new LVL beam to our advantage with the electrical. We notched and cut several 2x4s to create a bit of a box where we could run all of our wiring without the need to drill and run them through all of the floor joists in the room above. This meant a far less time consuming and much better organized process without any aesthetic sacrifice.

It feels like we worked on this part of the project for months, but it was only a couple of weeks. As I mentioned, in the dead of winter the room was COLD, and all we wanted to do was to get to a point where we could insulate the walls and ceiling.

After running the electrical and my dear husband's overkill geekfest wiring, we had one small aspect of plumbing to attend to. When we moved in several copper supply lines were running outside of the wall and along the baseboards. I know this is a common occurrence in old homes where plumbing was first added, but this was different. Whoever did this just was just plain lazy and wanted to get the job done. To make matters worse, one of the pipes that exited the house to the hose connection had burst inside the wall years before. Someone then applied a temporary pipe patch that had remained in place for probably 20 years, just waiting to wreak havoc again. If you look very closely, you can see the old hose connection and pipes along the wall in this photo.

We realized the pipes were no longer even necessary since we were moving our hose bib, so my plumber...yep, you guessed it, Alex, reconfigured all of our supply lines into this neat assembly that would eventually be hidden under the floor.

Though we still had a LONG way to go until we were done with this project, we were making progress and moving towards putting it all back together. The inspection went well and there were no issues with anything we had done. We let out a huge sigh of relief, looked around at our room and decided there was no time to waste, we needed to get moving on the next step.

At one point during the process of electrical as plumbing, our contractor, Craig, came by to check on us. I think he was surprised both by our progress and our determination. But I think he was a little glad we weren't calling him every ten minutes asking him to bail us out of our mess.

How do you think you would have handled a similar situation? Do you typically have grace under fire, or are you more the Chicken Little type. Given that we literally felt like the sky...or at least our second floor...was falling, I think we gathered ourselves together pretty nicely. It also helped to know we weren't alone, and to know the somewhere someone else was going through the same thing. That's why we love to hear your stories about similar scenarios.

We'll be bringing you the next steps in our process and what we had to go through to put everything back together just a little later this week. So be sure to check back and see some of the cool materials and methods we used when reassembling our little disaster area. 

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