Look up! Fixing up the Farmhouse, Part III

After the interior painting project was completed at the Flown Piggies Farmhouse, next on the 'get that stuff fixed' agenda was lighting.  Honestly, I don't blame the previous owners for installing the cheapest possible lighting. Why sink $$ into a house they weren't planning on living in? But where is the joy of living in a pretty house where you look up, only to see a boob light glaring down on you. The Boob Lights are throughout the house, ten in total, a few are closet dwellers

AKA 'Boob Lights'

There were other not-to-Madame's liking sort of lights as well. 

Tri-Light Unit

There were several of these fixtures referred to as 'tri-lights', not because they conjure up images of glowing sexy teen vampires, but because they have 3 lamp units. Only 2 of the lamps worked for each tri-light. The is only enough wiring in their base power boxes to allow only 2 of the 3 lamps to light. Geez, talk about setting off one's OCD tendencies. 

I decided all lighting needed updating. At first I intended to have them all installed by Handyman Jim II. But I thought, how hard could it be? I've known some fairly dim 'bulbs' that replaced their own lighting fixtures and such so decided I must be up to the task. So armed with knowledge gleaned from YouTube, I ordered a bathroom vanity light unit.  

The realtor photo on left, doesn't quite show the rust, grime and state of 'Ugh!' that was the vanity lighting on the first floor bathroom.   

At right are the genuine, Claire-installed 'lily lights'. Damn, but I think they look great. The whole bathroom has a theme of garden greenery. So freakn' cute.

With one whole project under my belt, I went on to order additional light fixtures. Below is the light fixture style decided on. 

The light below hangs by its grounding wire, during installation. It surprised me how the fixture is held up by its own wiring while one diddles around clamping like wires to other like wires and such.

A bit crooked...

All of the lighting bases were round, and all the new base light units were square, so it was a pain-in-the-bum getting the square pegs into the round fittings. The first couple of fixture bases had to be unscrewed and re-connected which was easy-ish but nevertheless annoying to do.

TADA!  All straighted out... sort of.

With 5 first floor light units replaced, next up was the stairwell lighting. I was sure I could install a new light there myself - that being IF I could reach the stupid thing! As there didn't seem much hope I would grow a foot or two any time soon or ever, so I had to hire an electrician.                                                                                      

Two bulb tri-light stairwell light fixture

I couldn't wait to see what kind of fancy ladder or what-not the electrician would use to reach the old light fixture. Turns out, as he exceeded 6 ft in height, he used a fancy set of tools, called his 'arms' to reach up and get the work done.  

Spiffy new replacement light fixture 

1/2 painted with old light fixtures

While we're up here on the second floor there were yet another pair of  'need replacement' boob lights, one of which can  be seen there on the right. This photo was taken when the corridor was about half done with its paint job.

I got 2 additional fixtures, this time with two bulbs each and I put them in.  As with the other fixtures, these hold those new fangled, old fangled retro 'Edison' bulbs. Yep. Everything old is new again.

Last up for replacement lighting was the dining room and central kitchen lighting. The lighting had been installed haphazardly by someone with no sense of either design or balance. Dead center in the kitchen there was a weird white fan with a light & weirdly short, ten inch fan blades. There are also two boob lights, as well as two tri-light fixture thingies.  

Kitchen lighting... rather unorganized

Deciding the units I'd purchased were too heavy for me to deal with on my own, enter Handyman Jim II. He did lovely job removing 4 light fixtures, replacing them with the 2 new spiffy, fixtures. 

Final kitchen lights.... Aren't they d' lovely?

And that is how the old dairy farmhouse got new lighting, upstairs and down. There are still 3 bedrooms worth of boob lights to be replaced - eventually  - with overhead ceiling fans, but that is a future story for another time.