My Life as a Pilot, and other such mental fodder...: January 2010

I just finished a small remodel project on the house. We had some really annoying cabinets hanging over the bar between out kitchen and dining room that were always getting in the way. A couple days ago I pulled them down then had a friend of our come over and wire in some new pendant lights to go in the place where the cabinets were. We also installed a dimmer switch for them as well as a new outlet while we were at it. After some painting the area looks much better, and is much more functional now. It also feels a lot more open and bright, with a nice ambiance provided by the stained glass pendents. This of course snowballed into removing the hideous old ceiling fan in the dining room and replacing it with a matching chandelier. That looked great once I got the chain looking right, but because the lights face down and the glass is heavily tinted the new light made the room much darker, although the table was very well lit. Perfect for dining and relaxing but sometimes you just need the room lit up. This led to yet another trip to Home Depot last night to get a new ceiling light to replace one that had stopped working right after we bought the house. We had assumed the bulbs were burned out and had gotten used to it not working since I could not get the glass unstuck from it to change the bulbs. I ended up taking a hammer to it. The glass doesn't exist anymore. Turns out the bulbs were fine and the problem was with the installation itself. Whoever put that light in did not know what they were doing since they just twisted the wires together, and the ground had come loose... Well, now there is a properly installed and matching lamp up there that puts out plenty of light when we need it.