Tag: kitchen

Hi, welcome to my first ever blog post.  I hope we can get to know each other and I hope you enjoy it.

I moved house in December 2017, for the first couple of months I couldn’t really sink my teeth into it due to family commitments and Christmas being around the corner but I am making some real progress now.

 

So, here she is in all her boring beige glory.  Not the most attractive facade but I think I can cheer it up, some plants and hanging baskets will go a long way.

The house had always been a rental property until the previous owners decided to sell.  I totally understand why someone renting for a while wouldn’t want to spend any money or effort to make changes. As a result it was very magnolia and beige.  My two least favourite colours.

I was originally looking for a period property with bags of character and original features, I was dreaming of cast iron fireplaces and ornate coving,  but after a year of trying to move,  sales falling through and feeling a little impatient I decided to go and view this one.  I added it to my list of viewings as a bit of a red herring but it had that ”home” feeling when I walked through the door.  Total opposite of what I thought I wanted.  It’s only 4 years old and is very energy efficient which also pleased me very much.

I viewed the house and thought, great, just a lick of paint.  Yeah right… Of course I want to change everything!

The main thing that bothered me was the lighting situation.  This is the main focus of this post.  We will get to everything eventually though, I promise!

As you can see from the various angles, it’s a lovely, big, airy and bright room.  Much bigger than I was used to!

As you can see we had a bulk head situation going on in the kitchen.  To me it looked like the lights you would find in a Travelodge hallway to lead you to your emergency exit… Not pretty.

The dining area of the kitchen also had two pendant lights and I was pretty sure I wanted to convert these into one centrally placed light.

I had been researching lighting options online for months before I moved, so many fixtures had caught my eye and it was a lot of fun decorating my virtual house before i’d moved in! such grand plans 🙂

In the end I fell for some really well priced lights from good old BHS I even managed to get them with a 20% off sale.

I bought three of these babies to hang above the breakfast bar/peninsula.

And two of these to replace the ”industrial” vibe that was going on in the kitchen. All from BHS.

I hired an electrician for this, I have to say, please don’t try to do this yourself.  Unless you’re an electrician 🙂

I also asked him to convert my two pendant lights in the dining area into one.

Here, I hung a gorgeous brass and frosted glass, 6 light pendant from NEXT

 

The six cables that suspend the glass spheres do not hang level, if you want it to look like the stock NEXT picture above it takes quite some fiddling.  Luckily I was happy to have them looking a little more asymmetrical.

As you can see I had this job done before I’d even unpacked a box.  Impatient, much…

I did do things a little backwards, It would of been far more sensible to paint everywhere before I started installing new lighting and having furniture delivered but that takes us back to my impatience 🙂 I know if you’re reading this you’ll understand!

I decided to go with all LED lamps in here as the pendants hang quite low and I didn’t want the heat from traditional or halogen bulbs.  Not to mention the savings in the long term on my energy bills, I also like the idea of not having to change them very often. I purchased these ones from B&Q I got the warm white ones to avoid that clinical blue tinge the older LED’s have and they give out a lovely warm glow.  They’re considerably more expensive but the savings in the long term far outweigh the initial outlay.

This room is pretty finished now, I’ll cover the other areas and decor in future posts but you can see here how the lights turned out. I am thrilled with them.

 

If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read, please follow me and see what else I have up my sleeve!