I have always said a nice house is up (look at fixtures), down (look at floor), and around (fresh wall paint).  Here’s the up part!

The ceiling fix is complete and the new lights are installed!  My contractor brother (Dean) was right that the job would take about four days – most of those were spent waiting for things to dry.  To review, on days one through three he demolished the old ceiling and put up the new drywall with the subsequent tape and mudding applied.  He also wired for a new light fixture – we had the choice of going for one with several lamps coming down or simply having two or three single drop lights.   You’ll see what we chose soon!

After all the mud was dry and the ceiling was ready to texture and complete, another heavy coat of joint compound or drywall mud was applied.

We picked up a texture brush at the local hardware store.

Dean dipped the brush into the mud so both the brush had mud and the ceiling had mud and began to tamp it down (up) hard.

Once he finished the entire wet surface, he did a few spot checks so there was no visible interruption between the old and the new.  He believes we may have to eventually paint so the entire ceiling will be the same shade of white, but so far it’s not too distracting.

Dean then moved on to the lighting.  First he connected the neutral (or white) wires from the ceiling wire to the light fixture and tied it off with wire connectors.  Then the white wires and the black wires were connected.

After all the wires were connected, he began to actually put up the fixture and then moved to the fixture in the kitchen.

(That’s me helping by handing some parts to him that actually held the light in place.)

And VOILA!  Two new beautiful light fixtures … only the ceiling fan behind this pendulum light was an older one, but the other photo I took wasn’t as good so you’re really seeing only one new one here.

And the only damage was to the watermelon which got some drywall splatter on it.

We ate it anyway and it was delish!

Today my contractor (aka brother) wired for the new light over our counter, put the drywall up, and mudded the drywall.  Now we wait for it to dry, although when the temperature cools, he’ll be on the roof fixing the flashing that caused the leak.

Hoping by the end of the weekend I’ll show you some new photos of my kitchen light fixtures! Have a happy weekend!

We’ve started the demolition of our damaged ceiling.  Here’s a “before” picture.

First we went to buy our supplies at the home improvement / hardware store.  Next we took down the light fixture, then prepared the room.  Like an episode of Dexter, it was important to cover everything in plastic because of the mess that was about to happen.

Then the messy demolition.

Don’t believe it’s messy?  Look at the floor.

Cleaning is a two-person job.  One to scoop up the insulation with a dust pan (or a piece of sturdy cardboard would do) and the other to hold the bag.

Next we’re going to replace the blow insulation with the kind you unroll so we can keep the heat from sweeping into the house.  Then my brother is running more electrical wire so we can add a couple of pendant lights over our the extension part of our L-shaped counter.

I haven’t picked the lights yet.  I’ll wait so my husband and I can decide together.  I liked the “orange” one from yesterday until someone told me that’s what they have in Starbucks.

Will decide tonight!

During the torrential rains and subsequent flooding in Tennessee and Kentucky in early May, we had a ceiling leak due to “wind driven rain” (according to our insurance adjuster).  My contractor (and brother) has finally cleared his schedule to come and make the repair.

While he’s working on the ceiling, we’re also adding some drop lights over our kitchen counter.  With hundreds to choose from, we still haven’t quite made up our minds on which ones to get and the debate is on.

My husband’s pick:

And my pick:

The joy of these lights is that you can change the globe as your moods and tastes change!  Will post more about the actual work as we make progress!

Well if follow what they did in CookieMag, then you could have one sooner than you thought. The lighting fixture was picked up from a yard sale for only $10, it was a standard bronze type color, but as you can the finished article is quite spectacular.

With some spray paint the and a bit of time the sad looking chandelier can easily be transformed into a center piece that would be the talk of all your friends and family.

Here is what you do:

1. Clean the chandelier thoroughly to remove dirt and rust.

2. To eliminate a step (roughing up the smooth finish with sandpaper to allow paint to stick) consider using Krylon Fusion spray paint, which easily sticks to slick surfaces like metal.

Go on over to Cookie Mag to read the rest.

Source  [Craft Zine]

Sometimes home repair isn’t putting a new addition on your suddenly too-small house; it can be as simple as making your household more accessible for the people you love.

Light switch extenders are perfect for giving your toddler the ability to practice their independence and those all-important "big kid" skills. Mastery of darkness can be a huge boost to your little one’s confidence.

And the usefulness of a switch extender doesn’t stop at the pre-K demographic…older kids with short stature and family members who use wheelchairs will also find extenders profoundly useful. They might not, however, want to use moon-shaped devices.

In that case, you’re in luck, because there’s a variety of styles out there to choose from, including a clear plastic one here and a simple wand shaped one here.

If you’re particularly handy, you can even cobble one up yourself using a wooden dowel and some electrical shrink tubing, both of which you can find at your nearest True Value or other local hardware store. You can also use one of those plastic rods that control the slats of any standard mini-blind unit. All you have to do is find shrink tubing that’s just big enough to fit over both your rod and the light switch. Fit the two pieces together and then apply heat with a hair dryer until the tubing is tight and the rod secure. Easy as pie. A complete home improvement project, done and finished in under two minutes–doesn’t get better than that.

When we bought our house, we bought the location more than the house. The house needed everything.
It’s hard to narrow down where to start when the list includes the roof, the flooring, and everything in between. We found it was helpful to split it up between the ugly and the non-functioning.

One of the first ugly projects we took on was lighting. Every fixture in the house was awful. The best of them looked like an antiqued kerosene lantern monstrosity that had most assuredly been rejected by a keen-eyed Spaghetti Western set designer and the rest of them were the kinds of things that you’d see left over in the free pile at a garage sale.

Shopping for lighting can be a daunting process, especially right after you’ve closed escrow…too many choices and not nearly enough money, but we had to feng-shui some of the ugly out of there and soon. Fortunately we found a great (temporary) solution at Costco. On our way to the Giant Muffin sector, we saw a huge pallet stacked high with fluorescent ceiling fixtures that, while we didn’t absolutely love them, at least they were better than half of what we’d seen at some other stores and they bore only a passing resemblance to anything from the Star Trek set–certainly a step up from where we’d started.

Plus, if we acted now, each gleaming, non-fugly fixture was only $8.50 each! At that price we were practically making money on the deal; the bulbs alone were worth $5 something! I thought we needed six of them; naturally, my better half thought the correct number was more like seven– so we bought eight and it was still less money than the one light that we really did like.

We blasted home like we’d just won the lottery and installed six out of the seven in about an hour and a half. We only got shocked once, each.

So the moral of the story today kids, is even if you don’t absolutely love it, it’s OK to make a temporary improvement. As long as it’s a real bargain.

Hello, and glad you made your way here to Shakhammer! I’m Susan, a Certified Kitchen Designer, you can find me at my blog, here,  and at my main website, here. and I’ll be blogging about kitchen related information, tips, resources, and other good stuff, here at Shakadoo. Are you ready? Here we go.

I was looking around the blogs and found this post at apartment therapy and I quickly saw the light fixture, which is the same exact one I just had installed at a client’s home, in her kitchen. We used two of them over the peninsula in the silver color. Design*Sponge has featured this light too.

When I saw the hanging cord, (see how it’s loose in the named blog images) I said to myself, "that’s what she (my client) meant when she told me the cord wasn’t loose! The electrician pulled it totally taught, the cord as well as the wire it hangs from. Of course, the fear of whatever went through me as I thought (is there slack in the wire in the ceiling?) to which the electrician answered "I’m known for leaving plenty of slack!" Okaaaaaaay. So, all’s well that ends well for me. The lesson here is: watch your electrician and give him instructions FIRST for very high end lighting, as oftentimes, part of the look is a working part made to be emphasized in a decorative way. 

I may make mention of one more thing. I think if I had to do it over again, I would lower the lights by about 2". In this case, the client wanted ample room to see below the lights. There is a particular "look" to lower hanging pendant lights, something warm and  intimate/romantic about it, I’m not sure what, but I like them hung  lower than normal. Experiment, and you’ll get a whole different look. Maybe intimate vs. functional, yes, that’s it!