Keeping it short today. And I resisted the urge to dump another bunch of photos on you.
I love our little house, overall. I’m glad we bought it when we did.
Being glad for it doesn’t mean I don’t want changes. I hate the flooring with a passion, and not much happier with the kitchen lights.
Y’all.
Our kitchen lights are shop-style fluourescent lights. We’re talking the 4-foot tube lights that randomly buzz and flicker. Occasionally they don’t turn on at all — until they decide at 2am it’s the right time to glow the place up. They’re ugly, they’re marginally functional, and I’d love to swap them out for an LED setup.
This morning, G hollered for me to come see. One of the kitchen lights had come detached from the ceiling and was hanging by its wires. Remember – this a 4-foot metal fixture. I don’t know how much the things weigh. I guess one good thing about the cheap-ass build of this house is nothing here weighs much. Well, except the doors. The doors in this place are ridiculously heavy. One of the closets has sliding doors that won’t slide, because they’re too heavy for the ultra-lightweight hardware used to mount them. G was going to replace the hardware. Unfortunately you can’t, not without literally ripping into the framing. So… he muscles them along as well as he can.
I didn’t take a photo of the dangling light fixture because I only had a second to duck my head around the corner. Work was busier than the average Sunday. And thanks to G, the runaway flouorescent is flush against the ceiling once more, secured by drywall anchors this time.
We talked about swapping the fixtures out, for several reasons. We both like the smallish set in the picture at the top of this entry, and they aren’t crazy expensive. (They’re on Amazon here.) If I were able bodied I’d order them and change them out myself. Buuuut me on a ladder is a recipe for oh HELL no. I’m not sure if G knows how to swap out a light fixture, and it’s not something I want to walk him through, especially not in this place. Besides which, G isn’t the picture of health, either.
We have a friend who’s an ex-electrician. He did a partial rewire of the house to get the ceiling fans working, right after we moved in. He’d broken his back on the job, though, so couldn’t climb into the attic to do the whole job. (I didn’t ask him to do any of the work – he was the one who found it and insisted on getting it to the point it wasn’t a fire hazard.)
If and when we switch out light fixtures, we’re going with a licensed electrician. They don’t come cheap. Since I don’t think I’m going to renew our home warranty again this summer, though, we may take that money and put it toward the lighting job.
Electrical stuff is scary for sure. I’m glad G. was able to get the current (no pun intended) light back in the ceiling. Good luck with switching out the lights when you can afford an electrician.
Small electrical jobs – like changing out a switch or a regular light fixture – don’t scare me. I wouldn’t mess with the panel or anything like that. But I cannot do ladders. no more than I can do stairs. It isn’t safe and I’m not willing to commit suicide to replace ceiling fixtures. If they didn’t work or were a fire risk, I’d bite the bullet and just do it. But not just because of taste.