Let there be light in the breakfast nook

I wrote previously about the light fixture in our breakfast nook, originally I wrote about how it was not really our taste and so I was planning to update it rather than replace it. Then I wrote about how when I got a better look at the light fixture that I discovered that it was not in good enough shape to continue to be used, that the plastic outer casing around each of the light bulbs was somewhat burned. This of course was especially concerning since the bulbs that had been in the light fixture exceeded the maximum allowable wattage for the fixture so we weren't sure if the fixture might even have some actual damage due to being overloaded.


Well when I pulled down the old fixture I discovered that the wires were mildly damaged so I had to cut the wires back and strip them in order to hang the new fixture we had purchased, of course if you try this at home please remember to turn off the circuit that corresponds to the outlet where you will be working. Once the wires were cut and stripped it was time to hang our new light fixture. This is much easier than many people think it is, all you really have to do is connect the live or hot wires to each other and fasten them with a wire nut and then connect the neutral wires to each other and fasten them with a wire nut (the black wire should be the live wire and the white wire should be the neutral wire). Honestly the most difficult part of the whole thing was cutting and stripping the wires, well unless you want to count drilling the hole for the hook to swag the chain off of so the light hangs in the center of our table. Of course that was only so difficult because I didn't have the right drill bit for the job so I had to make it wide enough with the bit I had. And of course once we got the light fixture up we put a nice little CFL bulb in the fixture. I love CFLs because they don't get nearly as hot as the incandescent bulbs do, just remember what the old fixture looked like after it had too strong of incandescent bulbs in it.

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.