Good surprise

Among all the tiny surprises that we have found in our new house we did have one really good surprise... the pot light in the main bathroom is actually a small skylight to shed some natural light in an otherwise enclosed room. We were extra excited about this because it is something we always planned to eventually put into our house after we found one and figured out the places we wanted to put them. Now we have a good idea of how much light comes in through a pot light style skylight and will better be able to determine in the future where we would like to put more of them and how many more of them we want to put in the house.

Light bulbs

As I was switching out the incandescent chandelier bulbs in the living room sconces with CFL's last night I discovered that the bulbs that were in the fixture were 50 or 60 watts each (I couldn't quite make out the tiny writing on the tiny metal base of each bulb). I'm not positive if the light fixture itself can handle that kind of wattage or not, but one thing was painfully clear, the chandelier shades that covered the light bulbs could not handle those bulbs. The plastic underneath the decorative fabric on the shades, which appeared to be there to give the shades their shape, was cracked and then proceeded to crack even more when I touched the shades in order to remove them to swap out the bulbs and then put them back on with the new bulbs in place.

It really surprises me how bright of bulbs were being used in this house previously, especially since the house is fairly bright in the daytime without any lights on. Now I am left to find new shades to replace the existing shades on the wall sconces in the living room. That is unless I can figure out some way to repair the existing shades. I am also left knowing that I really need to swap out all of the incandescent bulbs in the house as quickly as I can for fear that the bulbs might damage more of the fixtures or cause an even bigger problem.

Upon closer inspection of the chandelier style shades that are on the wall sconces I found that there is no metal boning to help give the shades their structure, sadly that means that there is no easy salvaging of these 4 shades. It looks like that is one more thing to add to the ever growing shopping list for the new house. So far the closest I can find online are 6" Ekas shades at Ikea and are $7.00 each, that means $28 to replace something that probably shouldn't have needed replacing if it were used properly. Oh well, at least for now we haven't stumbled upon any big and expensive problems that we were unaware of.

Light for the breakfast nook

Now that we are in the house and I am able to really get to know the house and what our specific needs are for this house and the various areas of the house I can start considering what to purchase for the house. One of the big surprises that I stumbled upon was a problem in my hopes to reuse the chandelier in the breakfast nook. The plastic part of the light fixture near the light bulbs is somewhat melted, it could be from using light bulbs with too high of a wattage for the fixture or since the inside of the shades are reflective it is possible that even using the maximum wattage allowable in the fixture was too much for the plastic parts close to the light bulb to handle. Either way I am left looking for a new light fixture for the area now. Not a big deal since the chandelier in there was not really our taste so I was going to have to do something to change the look of the chandelier anyhow so that it would be more inline with our tastes.






















I found one that I really like at the Pottery Barn, the Porter Pendant. The only issue I have with the fixture is that I can't really drape the cord to make it hang off center in the space. I want to do this because I plan to put the table up against the window and if I don't put the fixture off center towards the window then we will continue to bump our heads on it as we have been doing with the current light fixture. For now I had to move the table so that it is under the current light fixture so that we won't continue to bump our heads on the light fixture. It will be nice to finally get a light fixture in there that suits our tastes and that we won't continually bump our heads on.

This morning I stumbled upon a similar light fixture with a chain at Ikea, the Kroby Pendant Lamp. Of course this lamp doesn't have the same cool factor as the one at the Pottery Barn which raises and lowers on a pulley system and is modeled after the antique lamps that once lit workshops in Paris and it also doesn't allow for as bright of a light bulb (60 watt max vs. 100 watt max with the larger Pottery Barn light), but since I will save over $100 on this light and it will be able to be hung off center easily so that it hangs in the center of the table preventing people from bumping their heads on it and of course our house is pretty bright even without lights on so I am pretty confident that this light will prove to be a good choice for us.

Breakfast nook

We have this rather large breakfast nook area attached to the kitchen with lots of light coming in from the large windows that line the wall of the space looking out onto our back yard. I think that the best way for us to go with this space would be to put a rectangular table and a few chairs there so that we can have a very versatile space; somewhere that can serve as an informal eating space, somewhere suitable for getting some work done, doing some arts and crafts projects, etc.


In the sort term I plan to make use of our old dining room table which has seen better times many years ago, but it is still in a very functional state despite all the nicks and dings it has acquired over the years. I guess you could simply say that our table has a lot of character these days.




Here are two very different thoughts that I think may work well for this space. I am just not sure which one would be more functional for us, the one with the painted folding wooden cafe chairs or the one with the country style chairs. Of course part of the challenge is that the table we have now only has room for two chairs on each side of the table and somewhere down the line I would like to get a longer table that would fit at least three chairs on each side so whatever I choose needs to be easy enough to find another similar chair or two later on so that they can be added to the set when a new table is purchased. Of course one option would be to simply buy the extra chair or two now and put them along the side of the table now that way they are already there when a new table is purchased.

Dining Room

Well the big day is just around the corner. We have our final walk through Monday night and get the keys to our first house at that time. Of course this means that we are thinking a lot about what we want to do with the house, both in the near and distant future. The near future of course includes furnishing the house.


Our beautiful little formal dining room is square and has a small built in china hutch and chair railing. As we have never had a formal dining room and a separate breakfast nook we only have one dining room table with chairs. Our current dining room table is not at all formal and is also a rectangular shaped table which would work better in the breakfast nook so we need to get a new table to go with our current chairs, of course we will also have to figure out chairs to go with our current table too.


We have decided that a round table (preferably with a leaf) would be the best choice for our formal dining room, something in a darker wood color to provide a nice contrast to our chairs and make the space feel more formal would be great. Of course we really love the look of the pedestal tables, however the reviews for the lower end pedestal tables say that they tend to be rather wobbly and the finishes often scratch easily and some of them even come off of the tables - not good. This is leading me to leaning towards a low end round table that is neither a pedestal or real wood. Of course when the little man is a little older we will most likely buy a quality solid wood pedestal table for the dining room though, but we just don't see the point in spending the money when our little guy will most likely just damage the table in the next few years anyhow. I found a round table that is a dark brown-black color with a leaf for $150 which I think may very well be the right table for us right now.


This is the table without the leaf extension - seats 4













This is the table with the leaf extension - seats 6