the before's

My in-laws gave us a Christmas gift of an electrician for a day. Since we're totally non-handy (and let me tell you, that's a really non-handy trait to have when you want to design and re-design your space a million ways from Sunday) we had a few projects lined up for Saturday morning. We wanted to replace our track lighting, circa 1982, in the kitchen. Let's shoot straight, track lighting is NEVER sexy. In this case, all I could really justify doing is replace the fixture with something more up-to-date. If we got into refiguring the fixture and doing recessed lighting or even a monorail kit, we're talking way more than we had allotted. So we settled on a brushed stainless steel replacement fixture (from Home Depot at $69). My parents got us a fabulous lantern for our foyer (LampsPlus.com at $89) for Christmas, that I wanted to replace the industrial 1980's white barn pendant. We also wanted to add a flood light outside to light up the driveway and the walkway and replace the bottom-of-the-line outdoor wall sconce that doesn't even work anymore.

Here are the 'befores' from the work. I am taking these pics from my new MacBook, not a real camera so I wasn't able to pick up on the details. And I, stupidly, waited too long to take the "afters" so the lighting blows on the pics I have. I'll have to post the 'afters' tomorrow.

[track lighting....never a good idea]

[barn pendant... not so bad if in someone else's space]

We got three different quotes for the work, two of which came in right about $600. The main expense of the work was going to be the addition of the flood light, because they had to wire it to the wall switch on the inside, and needed to cut through the indoor walls (and repair the walls) to get it up. A friend suggested we call one of their family friends and he came out right away and quoted us a third of the price. We scheduled a date (yesterday) and he was as dependable as can be (I understand this is a rare quality in his line of work).

[my beloved walls. when you are only working with 1100 sq. ft, every inch of your wall feels like miles]

Let me know if you need the name of my fabulous electrician! He works all over Northern Virginia and has an awesome crew that does BEAUTIFUL drywall patch ups and home remodeling!

-Bethany