Ceramic Dog Flashbacks: a house log
To make room for our Hands-on-ed clothespin light, first we had to give the current fixture the ol’ heave-ho:
Well, not literally. Since there is in fact something kinda charmingly retro about that puppy, we hoped to give him a new life somewhere else in the house instead of sealing his fate (aka: donating him to the Habitat For Humanity ReStore). That is where this hallway that leads to the guest room, hall bath, playroom, and nursery comes in:
Clearly our hallway screams “nothing to see here folks, move along” for the time being, so there is certainly a lot to be improved upon. But our attention kept going to this 18″ wide (I will pause while you digest simply how wide that is) behemoth of a swirly ceiling-fan-ish glass shade. This picture does not do justice to its sheer size and resemblance to a giant serving dish for a twenty pound turkey or five million brownies in a pyramid. Be careful not to stare too long, you might fall under its hypnotic spell…
Are you getting sleepy? Well, if you are not – apparently I was. Because moments after turning off the power, taking that honking twice-as-large-as-the-soon-to-be-installed-light down, and readying myself to install the smaller and more streamlined retro laundry fixture in its place… this happened:
No sooner did the loud shatter stop ringing in my ears did I hear this from the other room: “John, PLEASE tell me was the old light.”
Sadly I could not. As I raised the metal base of the laundry light towards its new home in the hall ceiling, I failed to notice the glass cover had accidentally come with it – barely hanging on by one screw. Call it working too fast. Call it butterfingers. Call it errant flashbacks from cleaning up after someone who pooped in the bath that morning (hint: it was not me, Sherry, or Burger). Whatever my excuse, this current all-my-fault situation…
… was giving me crazy deja vu to this previous all-my-fault situation…
The lesson here? Do not let me near anything fragile in a hallway. Ever.
The other lesson? Bless Home Depot for selling similar glass bulb covers for seven dollars. A swift trip out to the store followed by some much-more-careful light fixture installation left us with this (do not mind the ugly attic pull-string in the background- we will have to upgrade that):
It is not quite the same as the original (which had subtle frosting on all sides, whereas this has a more distinct white band and a translucent base) but we do not truly mind the slight difference. Sherry’s considering the whole spray-frost option down the line if she changes her mind, but we are glad to live with it as-is for now. And at least finding something similar spared us from having to reinstall the old light again. Which is in short the Hands-on version of the walk of shame.
We will be the first to admit that the new fixture hardly qualifies as a “room transformation,” but perhaps we will do something lively with it down the line – like paint the base a lively color, or add stripes a la this $75 version from Schoolhouse Electric:
We learned from our other hallway (where we hung a ton of frames) that this type of small space can in fact be a lively spot to do something semi-dramatic. So we have talked about DIYing some wainscoting or some other architectural detail (and perhaps even using a bold-ish color above the rail). The only challenge will be working around all the other wall acne. Like this oh-so-attractive doorbell for example:
Perhaps when it comes time, we will shop for a new doorbell at this place…
Random side note: when I briefly studied improv comedy at the Upright Citizen Brigade Theatre in New York, that girl was in my class. Clearly we followed similar paths in life.
Oh look, now I am all sidetracked. Where was I? Oh yeah, apparently I break stuff. You?
