Slowly but surely...

My apologies for the lack of posting here lately! What with the job hunt and all, I've been pre-occupied with other things.

However, I have been slowly working on tiling more of the bathroom, which I'll be talking about in more detail once that's complete. For now, here's a couple of pictures from my foray into electrical work - replacing a couple of overhead lights.

Butler's pantry light (shown with cover removed for testing)

The light in the butler's pantry hadn't worked since we moved in, which wasn't really a problem during the summer - or during the day, thanks to the window inside it. With night falling earlier now, though, I found myself groping blindly for cookbooks in the dim light from the kitchen.  Thus, that light got replaced with another similar one. Nothing fancy for now, just a simple $10 (or so) light.

The dining room was trickier. Originally, the house came with an old and (we think) ugly candelabra-style light with a horned design and horrible fake plastic candles that were probably inserted later.  You can see a glimpse of it in the photo below (taken before we moved in).

Old dining room photo pre-move in, with light #1

Liz's grandmother was kind enough to give us one of her Tiffany-style lamps to replace it, but that one was intended to hang very low over a table, with its bulbs pointing downwards and uncovered - and hanging it higher gave it an almost painful radiance. Liz found one on Overstock.com that worked well, though, and also has a Tiffany-style design.

Dining Room light #3

Admittedly, I was a bit trepidatious about doing the work, but I'd seen a handyman install the grandmother's light, so I wasn't entirely flying blind. I think they both turned out well, anyway. Even better news - Liz found an antique store that may be interested in buying the old light fixture (#1).

On a side note, I've realized that we've also done lots of work in other rooms that happened before I started this blog. I may just go back and post some of those while the bathroom tile's in progress, so look for those in the near future.