Let There Be Light!

One of the smaller improvements we wanted to make was to the light fixtures in the house.

Our hall light wasn't terrible, apart from all the gold and shiny glass, but it was doomed from the beginning. It "fell" off the ceiling and shattered into a million tiny pieces. So we started by picking up a small fixture from Ikea:

A nice simple, clean look for our hallway.

If there's one thing our new house doesn't lack it's air circulation. The kitchen came equipped with these two beauties:

One over the cabinets and appliance space and one over the eat-in part of the kitchen...

They're great fans, just not quite our style. There are actually two more of the exact fan upstairs in the bedrooms:

 (Yes, that's Big Bill in his P.J.'s)

So it wasn't long before this happened:

We decided to replace the fan over the counters with a plain light fixture. Something about a fan over where we'll (yes WE) be cooking skeeved (again, apparently not a word... it's OK- Shakespeare was allowed to make up words... Dr. Seuss too... I think...) me out. We found this one at Home Depot:

 (Bill totally regretted asking me for help up on the ladder as soon as I started taking these pictures)

The finished product:

We had no real trouble installing these lights, but we knew installing the fan could be over our heads. (heh). No big deal, Bill started by hooking up the motor, while I had the incredibly important job of breaking down styrofoam and connecting the blades to their hinges:

We spent about 10 minutes deciding whether or not the fan should be flush to the ceiling and then another 45 minutes reading and re-reading the directions. We finally got everything installed...

 Checked the lights...

Bingo!
...and then the fan...

...NOTHING. Nothing Nothing Nothing! It was about 10 p.m., I was exhausted and needed to be up in 7 hours for work. I tried to convince Bill we'd try again the next day. He couldn't walk away. Luckily we had both our cars there, so I went home. About 2 hours later I received a video message with a working fan and a lot of profanity that I can't possibly post here. But I'll give you the gist: Bill fixed the fan and now owns it and is very proud :).

Anywho, we still have two fans upstairs to replace and are thinking about selling the whole lot on craigslist... I mean who wouldn't want 4 matching white and gold fans?!  ;)