When we moved in our house last year we knew we were going to be replacing lots of light fixtures (along with all sorts of other stuff which can be found in the archives of this lovely blog ;). Our first lighting job was going to be the kitchen. It was SO dark. I mean like, "I might cut myself while slicing an onion dark" or "I can't tell if my steak is well done or rare dark". Just pitiful lighting for a kitchen.
Speaking of pitiful, the worst light in the kitchen was the bedroom type light fixture right over the island... this drove me totally nuts! Bedroom lights are not kitchen lights, why was this so confusing to the person who picked the light fixtures for my house??
Plus, it looked super cheapo (ok, the person wasn't confused, probably just cheap)...
Here's a "Before" pic,
*This "before" pic is from a real estate web site and these were NOT my previous decorations, you can just barely see the cheapo light over the island but you get the idea.
Anywho, we really wanted to put in some pendant lights over the island but it was going to cost some big bucks to have an electrician come in and run additional wiring and cut holes in the ceiling to install them. You know me... I don't like to spend big bucks on anything!
Wandering around Lowe's one day I came across the pendant light globe section and was drooling over the selection of globes. My kitchen so needed one to take the place of the pitiful bedroom light. I was about to walk away when my little guy threw his sippy cup on the floor, when I bent down to pick it up I noticed on the bottom shelf some "pendant light kits" it was just what we needed!
A kit that allows you to hang 2 or 3 pendants from one light outlet in the ceiling. SWEEEET! You even get to pick your own globes!! It was fairly inexpensive, the kit plus the globes was around $65 bucks. If you (or someone you know) can switch out a light fixture your golden. (thankfully, sweet hubs is good at that stuff).
How does it work?? Well, instead of having a separate hole with wiring in the ceiling for each pendant, it uses the one that is there and hangs the pendants from a "decorative bar" instead of separate holes.
The only trouble we ran into was that the original light fixture wasn't exactly centered over the island and the kit pendant bar is meant to be centered over the existing wiring. We were able to get around this problem by centering the bar where we wanted it and adding an extra black screw to hold it in on the "far" end. No one will ever notice.
While the "decorative bar" may not look as good on the ceiling as having traditional separated pendants it looks much better than the bedroom light. And really, who is going to come in and stare at the ceiling anyway?? Hopefully no one. :)
Plus, I can see while chopping onions and eating steak... inalienable rights of any homeowner!
What a difference!
