Sometimes you Fail
Our house came with a devastatingly beautiful chandelier in the dining room. It was made of pure brass and the lights even had tassels on them! On a scale of one to glam, this chandelier was off the charts. At least that's how it may have felt in 1989.
We knew from the start this dining chandelier would have to go but we wanted to save up for something nice. We love the fan/light fixture in our living room adjacent and were hoping to match the style and colors eventually with a new chandelier. But thus far we had been finding other things to spend our extra money on... that is until Katrina happened upon a pretty descent looking light at a consignment store for $40!
Now, we didn't actually know what it would look like with lights because it wasn't plugged it at the consignment store, but we had faith that it would look great. We took our brass beauty down with ease and started on the new light. That's where it started going down hill.
Nothing wanted to work right. The piece that connects to the light box didn't fit correctly and once we got that on the hook for the chain wouldn't screw in because our ceiling is thicker than most (someday we'll explain that one). We struggled, quit, came back, argued about how high it should hang or whether the chain should be intentionally long so it would swag and hang centered over the table and in the end we finally got it hung. But, sadly it was too low. So we undid it all, cut the chain, cut and re-spliced the power cable, struggled with everything again, and managed to get it set up at the right height.
Ta-Da!
... and then we noticed. It doesn't really hang straight, does it? It's hard to see in the picture but one edge hanged a good inch below the opposite edge. You can pretty much see from across the room that it's not level. We worked on it, bent things, screwed things tighter, and adjusted but nothing worked. It was just lop-sided. We started to think, "Maybe we can live with it, it's better than the brass one." So we got some light bulbs and lit it up. It works! But let me show you what the above picture doesn't show you because we used a flash. In reality, it looks more like this:
Since the top of the light is solid metal, not an ounce of light makes it to the ceiling. It does a great job of lighting the table but the dark ceiling made the room feel like it was closing in on you.
Sigh. Since we don't want a crooked light that doesn't light the room we decided to take it back. It was a really frustrating ordeal. The most frustrating thing was that we ignored our mile-long project list to spend the entire night trying to make this work only to end up without a light at all. (We decided to spray paint the old fixture black as a temporary fix but won't be able to hang it back up until it's done.)
Although we love working on our house, sometimes house work is such a pain! We know we're not alone in this. If you've ever had one of these days, just remember it happens to all of us.
Back to the drawing board (or lighting shops!) We will keep you posted on our spray-painting endeavors and share any lighting options when we find them and are ready to make the purchase.
