bad robot brain

So, last Thursday night I had to take care of some “Husbandly Duties.” No! Not that husbandly duty, this one involved a handful of tools and some innovative thinking… Wait, no! Hmmm, alright-alright-alright, let’s just cut to the chase, okay. I spent the evening installing new pendant lights over our kitchen sink. I don’t normally talk about all the Mr. Fix-it type work that I do. When it’s finally done-it’s done, I want to put all the aggravation and cursing behind me. And it’s not like this situation is terribly different, but I’ve been wanting to keep better track of the improvements I’m making to our new home, and thought this might motivate me to move faster.

Anyway, we had these two god-awful looking lights over our sink that sort of reminded me of spaceships from a basement Syfy alien flick—yes Syfy, not Sci-Fi. These eyesores had been on the chopping block from the first moment we’d stepped into our new-old house, and shortly after moving in we began the hunt for something new. Let me tell you, looking for light fixtures is hard—almost as hard as picking wallpaper.

Eventually, we found the Arroyo Craftsman line of lights. These are new handmade lights fixtures built in the craftsman tradition:

We offer a respite from the cacophony and commotion of the mechanized,
automated and congested world. We hand-craft each piece individually from raw brass. Some finishes take days to cure. Our products are structurally superior. Commercial grade. Our designs are genuine and true to the materials we work with. They are not over-embellished like so much in our industrialized world. They foster peace and serenity.

What we liked most about the Arroyo fixtures compared to what you might find in at Lowes or Ho-Depot is not only the quality of the craftmanship, but the variety of finishes, and glass. You can truly customize the look of your lighting to fit your space. All of this customization comes at a price. What I mean is that nobody in the Lincoln area carries them in stock so you can’t see what the finishes actually looks like in real life, and since they are customized for you, you can’t return them. Needless to say, we were pretty nervous about buying these fixtures. Ivy and I spent weeks debating the style, the finish, and the glass. We finally settled on the A-line with the crossbars, in a rustic brown finish and cream glass. One thing that was important to me was that the lights give off a warm cozy glow, and the cream glass does just that.

It was also important that they complemented the antique fixture that we had gotten as the primary kitchen light last month. Which is a green and white slag glass framed by solid oak.

Like any old-house projects, hanging these lights took five times longer than what it should. But hey, that’s okay, I’ve done this enough times to have it figured out. The formula I follow is that if it seems easy, double the time you think you’ll spend on it. If it involves with electrical or plumbing, times it by at least three or four depending on how simple it seems—the lower the difficulty rating, the longer it’ll take. The flip side is that if the task seems daunting and you’ve stressed about it for at least a week before starting, it’ll be easy as pie.

Back to what I was saying… I suppose a professional electrician would say that the setup on the old pendants was not standard, which I kind of figured would be the case. This is usually not a big deal, but after taking down the old fixtures and unpacking the new ones I discovered that the way the two sets mount are completely different. I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say that there are a couple different mounting configurations that I’ve run across in my time, and it’s typically the cheaper fixtures which don’t hang as elegantly as the rest. So, I spent about 2-3 hours figuring out how to put a square peg in a round hole, running up and down the stairs grabbing tools and various pieces of hardware. That is until that bolt of lighting struck and I hacked together the mounting hardware from both lights and some extra pieces I had from a previous project.

Here’s another useful tip—don’t throw anything out. It’s okay to toss the old fixtures—those old pendants went bye bye—but keep the hardware. All of those odd screws, brackets, and pieces of threaded conduit from old projects have saved my ass more than once.

Anyway, after hours of frustration, a flash of genius, and a last minute call to my father-in-law to confirm that I probably wouldn’t electrocute myself with my wiring job I was finally done. I have to say that I am really pleased with how they turned out. Our new brass Arroyo Craftsman pendants give off a fair amount of light without being too bright—an important factor when the lights are so close to your head when washing dishes. They fill the room a warm glow, and look quite charming from the street.

That’s one more thing checked off of my list. This weekend I started digging into the remodel of our upstairs sunroom, pictures of the destruction, a pleasant surprise, and the goose-egg on my leg to follow shortly.