Blinded By The Light

Who doesn't like this song? Even if no one really knows what the lyrics are.



When Jon and I were painting in the hallway we noticed how gross our hallway light was. Its a bad photo but you can see how cloudy and dirty it is. It kind of looks like this. But it had a huge bubble on it where the lightbulb had gotten too close to the plastic coverings and melted it. Gross.

So I asked Jon to take it down so we could at least clean it. But we couldn't figure out how to get the stupid thing down. After a few tries we got frustrated... and decided to take a hammer to it. Poseidon and I ducked into the guest bedroom while Jon swung away. The frame still wouldn't come out... until we realized that all we had to do was stick something into between the ceiling and the frame. Then it just popped off. Oops.

Once we pried it off we discovered that we had an attic! My mom and I had been wondering about that when Jon and I did our final walk through when we bought the place.

Broken light fixture = Home Depot run. Much to my delight and Jon's dismay.

Initially we wanted to replace the tray and the acrylic sheet but we quickly discovered that the tray (the metal thing in which the acrylic light cover lays) didn't match any of the ones in the store so we think it was a custom job. Since we couldn't replace the whole thing we settled on at least replacing the acrylic sheet. $10 and half an hour later we were on way back home.

Jon used the old one as guide to cut replacement sheet down to size with a box knife. Quick and easy!

While the thing was open we replaced the old bulb with an energy efficient one. We flipped on the light and exclaimed "woooow!" We were amazed by how much brighter the hallway was.

We were so impressed Jon did the same thing to the similar smaller one in the entryway. Here's the before:

Jon and Poseidon cut it to size...

... gave the frame a fresh coat of paint...

...added an energy efficient bulb and installed it!

You can tell that new light coverings are clearer and let through way more light than before. And it looks a lot cleaner. No more dead looking bug things being illuminated. Thank goodness!

But we didn't stop there. While Jon was painting the highest corner in our stairway I asked him to clean the chandelier. He noted that the chandelier had old white bulbs instead of the new energy efficient ones. So he changed those too. Bright lights, big change! I think we said "wooooow" again. Who knew light bulbs could make such a big difference? We had actually wanted to replace that fixture because we thought it was too dim so we're definitely reconsidering that now.

The best part? We only spent $10! We already had the energy efficient light bulbs. Those were a gift from my parents when we moved in. Our only expense was the new acrylic sheet and we used that for two different fixtures. I LOVE cheap and fast upgrades and this one brightened up our home and my day!