This Little Light of Mine

So I have the distinct feeling that blogging is about to get quite a bit harder. Not the taking pictures and writing part, which I like to think that I’ve so far managed okay at, but the finding time to actually do it. Reason? Well, I’m a student. And school is suddenly back in session. This means that my schedule has been turned on its head and that 9:30am photo editing and an 11 o’clock post is probably not going to be a given anymore.

However, having said that, I do hope to continue to do a post a day (or as close as I can get to that). The only difference will be that it might go up at 8am or it might go up at 10pm. You’ve been warned.

Now, onto the real subject of today’s post, which is: We finally got rid of that out-of-place pendant light above the kitchen sink. Huzzah!

This is what used to hang over the sink. Now, it’s not entirely hideous by any means. In fact, in a different style of room, it could be quite lovely. Granted, it needs a good bath, but once the heavy layer of grime is removed, the warm glass would probably glow a little brighter and the detail along the edge would probably be a little spiffy-er.

But, as you probably can tell, it’s so not my style. Almost from the moment I laid eyes on it, I knew it had to go. So when Denny steered us into the lighting aisle of Home Depot the other day (voluntarily, might I add!) I took the opportunity to look through the pendant shades and see what kind of selection was available. I originally liked a simple clear, seeded-glass shade, but Denny pointed out that the fact that it was so clear would highlight the bulb too much…so I crossed it from my list. But when he jokingly held up a subtly patterned, white oval shade, it was love at first sight (he eventually came around to admiring it, too). We ended up coming home with it and a new nickel-finish fixture to replace the old iron-colored one.

When we got home, we wasted no time in getting the thing installed (it was late afternoon and our daylight was slipping away). Of course, the easy part was tearing down the old light.

It took longer to preheat the oven for dinner (pizza) than for Denny to dismantle and pull down the stained-glass fixture. (And sorry for the poor quality of that picture...I honestly don't know what happened to it.)

Next, we measured out how low we wanted the new light to hang. This was a very precise process which involved me holding the light up at various heights while Denny stood under it as if he were going to do dishes. If there was enough space above his head for him to comfortably maneuver, it was considered good enough. Wait, did I say “precise”? In hindsight, maybe not so much.

Once we had our height measured out, we cut the cord to the right length and…hit a snag.

See those little flags on the ends of the wires? They were the labels for which wire went to ground and so forth. And we thoughtlessly hacked them off without marking out what was what. Once we realized what we’d done, there was some panicking and a small bit of cursing, followed by me eventually realizing that someone at one point used some identifying characteristic to label the wires and if they could find them, so could we. So I got started on closely inspecting them and, sure enough, the wires had very, very tiny, different-colored stripes on them. We matched them to the wires that still had flags on them and soon enough we were ready to go again.

After a little bit of finagling, Denny got the fixture wired up properly and in no time at all we were putting on the new shade.

Voila! The lighter finish on the fixture and the bright white of the shade made all the difference in the world. What was previously a fairly-useless pendant is now a fully functional and lovely bit of decoration above the sink. It lights up that area much better than the old one and I can’t help it…every time I step into the kitchen now I go and turn it on, energy bill be damned. Those swirling lines in the glass remind me of sunlit cloud-ripples, and they make me smile every time.