The Search

  Happy new year ya'll, I hope everyone had a very happy holiday season! Now that they are over I'm hoping I can get around to blogging more often. I check my favorite blogs constantly waiting for new posts and then never update my own; I know, I am a total hypocrite! But I just finished my latest project and thought I would take a minute to share.

  I've been looking for a new light fixture for the ceiling of our hallway for ages now. I picked up one from Ikea a month or so ago, and even though I loved the way it looked, it hung way too low due to our 8 foot ceilings. Anyone over 6 feet tall risked hitting their noggin on it, and since I have several tall friends it had to go.

  Finding a replacement wasn't as easy as it sounded. I scoured the web, ReStore, Craigslist, and big box stores for a light that was small enough for a hallway, short enough to hug tight to the ceiling but still with a mid-century flare to fit in with our decor. I was about to settle on a mediocre, expensive fixture I found online... and then my local vintage store came through for me when no one else could!

   It wasn't perfect, but boy did it have potential! I fell in love with the stars, and I couldn't wait to see them lit up! We decided to take the risk and pick it up for $25 even though it needed rewiring, painting and was missing the mounting hardware. After a trip to Lowe's we picked up all the supplies we needed to restore it for around $30. We used a wire brush to chip off the rust and old paint and then used Rustoleum spray paint to restore it to the original white. The wiring was simple enough, so we didn't even need to pay someone to rewire it for us. All it took was a simple wiring kit from the hardware store.  With a few hours of work we had it looking great! The mounting was by far the hardest part. We found the supplies easily enough, but it turned out to be one of those projects that seems simple in your head but executing it somehow turns into a chore and takes 20 times longer than it should (I've come to find this is the case with pretty much EVERY home improvement task we take on!).

  Here it is all painted up and ready for it's big debut.

  And here it is lit up! Isn't it majestic? The stars are beautiful and it fits in perfectly in our hallway. I'm sure everyone will have a hard time believing it's not original to the house.

   Do any of you have any new projects you've been working on? Or projects planned for the upcoming year? Our list is about a mile long of things we hope to get accomplished this year, but we are slowly chipping away at them one by one.