Happy New Year! (Or a Lighting Update)

If you remember, I had purchased a whacked-out disco ball lighting fixture for our dining room. Well, it arrived in record time a couple of weeks ago. The week it arrived, I set aside a couple hours on Saturday morning to assemble the beast... which just so happened to not include instructions.

But as an unofficial resident of Ikea, I knew I was up to the challenge. After all, if I can handle vague, sort-of-helpful illustrated instructions involving stick people, I could tackle a mini-replica of the New Year's Eve ball. How hard could it be?

Turns out, I should have really looked at the pieces before beginning the assembly. I got the main housing put together just fine, but when it came to all the plastic clips that hold the acrylic balls, I was halfway through before I realized there were two different types... and they needed to alternate around the fixture. Rats.

I took it apart, divided each type into two piles, and started again. Then, I noticed that two of the clips were missing the little holder parts. Crap. Well, it wasn't anything a little super glue couldn't fix.

Within two hours I had it unpacked, sorted, put together and ready for hanging. However Mike was away that weekend and since I could barely lift the finished fixture, thought it would be safest to wait for his return. We weren't able to get to the actual hanging part of this project until this past weekend, but I'm head over heels with the result.

But first, take a look at what our new fixture replaced:

Oh but wait! It extends!

That's right, folks - the perfect fixture with which to get up close and personal with your pasta and meatballs.

Everyone who has visited our house has gotton a real kick out of this light. I guess they were really popular back in the day. I was told my great-grandmother had this exact light in her home at one time.

As fun, unique, and funky as the fixture was - in the end - it just wasn't what we pictured for the room. So down it came, and in it's place, perfection:

Unfortunately, the old lighting fixture was covering up some ancient nastiness - cracks, staining, and a big gap between the junction box and ceiling. But an inexpensive plastic ceiling medallion solved 90% of our issues:

There is still a bit of a gap between the fixture and the ceiling, but we're looking at this as a quick fix since walls will come down next year, and the dining room light will get moved from its' current location. Ceiling medallions aren't really my style - they are a smidge too traditional looking for me - but overall I think this is a really easy, cheap, fantastic-looking solution.

This fixture took a lot of work - a couple hours to assemble, an hour to hang, and in the end, once we turned it on, we weren't happy with the halogen bulb - so Mike rewired the fixture so we could pop in an energy-efficient fluorescent which looked a million times better (and brighter). All in all though, we saved at least $250 by purchasing through eBay instead of another online retailer. So even though it turned out to be a labor of love, I couldn't be happier.

Now if we could just get that hutch in the corner out of this room, I'd stop saying mean, hurtful things to it as I walk through the dining room into the kitchen (Hi, my name is Erica, and I'm a furniture abuser)... I see a yard sale in our future.