Finally got around to replacing that dining room fixture

I had never paid much attention to the light fixture that we had in the dining room. Seemed pretty typical, and I’m not one for big fancy glass and crystal chandeliers. Certainly not in a house of ours, anyway. So when Rachel’s parents asked us if we wanted an extra chandelier they had in their house, I hadn’t really thought about it very much.

Here’s our old one at the right. I’m not sure when this one was installed, but judging from the style and the make of it, I’d say it was probably sometime in the 70’s or 80’s. It’s not bad, it’s just pretty low grade and fairly small.

Now that our dining room is twice the size it used to be with the kitchen wall removed, a bigger fixture probably would fill the (larger) room nicely.

So the Smiths gave us this terrific fixture, which Rachel set about painting in soon after we brought it back from Atlanta after Christmas.

The center and arms of it are powder-coated with textured paint that’s a mix of gray with perhaps a little bit of brown with a slight green tint (which matches the walls below our chair rail in the dining room pretty well.) It has these gold “ropes” which hang from the top down to each arm. I say “ropes” because they’re made of metal and not at all rope-like. So Rachel painted those, and the candle holders, black. And we decided to forgo the little mini-lampshades that cover each light bulb.

I had been putting off hanging it in the dining room for two reasons. One, I needed daylight to do it in, because I had to cut power to basically everything but the kitchen (our house in one big circuit — woo boy, that’s a story for another day.) And two, I was nervous about it being 3 times heavier than the old fixture and unsure if the 50 year old receptacle box in the ceiling would hold it.

On Sunday after daylight savings began, at 5 p.m. when it was still sunny outside, I cut the power and took the old light down. Turns out the new light fit right into the double-sided screw and hardware holding the old light up, and the weight didn’t seem to be a problem — though everytime Rachel walks upstairs and I see it swing slightly, I get nervous. That’ll pass one day, I hope.

So it’s up, and it looks pretty slick. Cost to us? A can of paint. (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

Check out some other before/afters of the whole dining room/kitchen. The first is from early December 2010 before the counters were even in (but the tree was up!) and the second is from last weekend, March 2011. The new chandelier really helps fill the bigger room, I think. Classes up the joint a bit, eh?

Same dates on these two:

We’re going to take the old fixture, paint it oil-rubbed bronze (looks black, really) and put it in the entryway, where some previous owner had installed a ceiling fan for some reason. That’ll be the next little project on the horizon. And another one with a total cost of the price of paint.