Brightening Up My Lazy World

One of the things I don't like about the new house is the lighting in the family room. In my former house, there were recessed lights on a dimmer switch that were controlled by a remote and I freaking loved it! I had the recessed lights in my Minnesota home's great room, too, but those weren't on a dimmer. Here, all I have is the glaring light from the ceiling fan. Blech.

I did add two lamps to try to get more illumination into the space, and while it does help, it's not as good as the dimmer switch lighting.

There was one other problem, too. Turning the lamps on and off got to be a pain. One required weaving my way between two ottomans, two chairs, and over a rug that won't lie flat. That's another story for maybe another day. The other light was accessible, but it was on the other side of the room. Inevitably, I'd be sitting down before I realized I needed the light. In my old house, I'd pick up the remote and turn the lights on or off without moving. I missed that.

It was to the point where I wasn't turning on the lamps because it felt like too much work. I know. Lazy.

There was a solution, though--technology. I bought two smart plugs.

They were about $16 each, which wasn't too badly priced considering what I saw on other smart plug products. These were supposed to be small enough to share the socket and that's sort of true. It will share the socket with a normal plug. It will not, however, share the socket with the plug for a surge protector and both lamps were sharing with a power strip.

It took some shifting, but I made it work. Then I had to pair the devices to an app on my phone. The directions weren't clear to me and it took the troubleshooting section to figure out what I really was supposed to have done. Once I did that, they linked up easily.

This is so cool! I can turn the lights on and off from anywhere with Wi-Fi, even if I'm out of town! I could have used this when my dad and I were traveling back and forth to Minnesota to get his house ready to sell. It also has a timer function. Right now I'm going to try having the lamps come on about the time I get up and turn off when I need to get in the shower for work. Also super cool. It has a countdown function, too, which I assume means if I want them to turn off in an hour, I set that and it will countdown until shut off.

I know these smart things right now are easily hackable, but I figured that two lights weren't a big deal. But despite this, these things are so cool, I'm thinking what else could I use this with? I have a floor lamp in my bedroom and a couple of bedside lamps, but beyond that? I have no idea where or how I'd use additional plugs.

Anyway, I'm totally loving these things although I have only had them a couple of hours at this point. Two enthusiastic thumbs up with the caveat that I'm still in the honeymoon period.

Let There Be Cool Lights

My style in decor is all modern/contemporary. I like clean lines with no swirls or curls. Keep the farmhouse/rustic look. Keep the traditional style. They're not for me.

One of the big negatives about the new house I bought is how traditional it is. Some of it is far too expensive to do anything about--the biggest example being my kitchen cabinets. OMG, I dislike them. They are vanilla in color (I prefer my wood be stained and not painted), they have this black line framing each door and drawer, and the crown molding at the top has a rope pattern that screams traditional. Ugh! Don't even get me started about the oiled bronze faucet, drawer pulls, lighting, door knobs, everything else.

Some of the oiled bronze, though, is replaceable because it isn't ridiculously expensive to do so and because I like mixing metals. I believe mixing metals has even become fashionable. Gradually, though, I hope to rid myself of almost all the oiled bronze and replace it with modern brushed nickel.

I began my campaign in the master bathroom.

The old light fixtures:

This is already down. I didn't think to take a picture when they were over the mirrors. (Two mirrors, two light fixtures.)

Here's my new lights:

To me, this looks sooooooooo much better. No swirls. No bell-shaped glass.







I also replaced the toilet paper holder in the water closet with brushed nickel. Three oiled bronze albatrosses gone, a million left to go.

Champagne Taste

In my bedroom, the only overhead light I have is the one in the ceiling fan and it's pretty dim. And the fan is kind of ugly with the brown metal thing from the ceiling down to the fan. It's like the builder standard model.

I'll also confess that I don't like ceiling fans in the bedroom. I know I live in Georgia and I know even people in Minnesota have these things and run them in the summer. It's just that I have this thing about air blowing on me. I don't like it right on my head and the ceiling fans always seem to be centered right over where I sleep. Plus, and this is big, the thing vibrates so hard when it's on, that I fear for my life. ;-)

Okay, well, maybe night quite that bad, but it does shake enough that I worry it will come down, and since I don't like it anyway....

So I started looking at lights online. I thought chandelier since I've seen other master bedrooms with them. And every single chandelier that made me stop and go ooh was over $1000. Some of them were over $3000 and one was almost $5000!!!

Who pays $5000 for ONE light???

After going through pages and pages and not liking any light that wasn't knocking on a grand, I decided that perhaps a pendant light would be a better way to go. I switched my focus and discovered that all the large pendant lights that made me go ooh were also over $1000. Seriously!

Call me cheap or frugal or whatever, but I didn't pay that much for my dining room light, and if I was going to bust the bank on one light, it would be the one everyone saw the instant they walked into my house.

I've decided to put my idea about changing the light on hold for right now. I'll just have to live with the dim, somewhat-scary ceiling fan for a while.

No Need To Yell "Fire" Last Night

Wednesday wasn't nearly as exciting as Tuesday. Thank goodness. :-)

I was able to see the A380--the really humongous plane from Airbus--again yesterday. It was parked right next to the hangars not that far from where I park my car. I was able to see it from nose to tail, and with the lighting on it, the plane looked way cool! It left today for Los Angeles and I was able to see it take off again, too. I got lucky both days on seeing it--somehow my timing on that was just perfect.

I had a surprise when I got home. As I went up the street, I hit the button for my garage door and turned in the driveway to see my dad standing there--and the door was going down. I was like, huh?

After a minute, the door opened again. It turns out that my dad and one of his lodge buddies were checking out my garage. You see, the electrician didn't put any switches for my garage lights inside the garage. Yep, I know. I never thought to look for them because who would put the only switches inside the house??? Anyway, my dad's friend can do electrical work and he was checking it out to add switches for me.

The story, however, doesn't end at 3:30 in the afternoon. About 7:15 or so last night, the phone rings. Now my parents have developed this awful habit of calling me constantly for nothing and I figured that's what this was, too. I was close. It was my dad, but it wasn't nothing. His lodge buddy was coming over in about 20 minutes to put a new bulb in my garage door opener. Of course this meant I had to pull the SUV out and give the thumbs up on the new bulb wattage. It turns out that the guy who installed the door put in a candelabra bulb instead of a real one. No wonder my garage was so dark!

My plan was to go to bed really early last night, but they were still out in the garage, actually doing stuff for adding switches. Finally, around 8:30, I was allowed to pull the car back in the garage and my dad said he'd lock up and shut off all the lights if I wanted to go to bed. I did.

So I'm almost asleep and the phone rings. It's my mom. She's looking for my dad because he has a couple of phone calls. Gah! Now she's developed an awful habit of no matter where Dad is or what he's doing, if that phone rings, she'll go and get him. What's up with that? He could be in their backyard, trimming hedges, and she'll leave the person sitting and walk all the way out to bring him in. I don't know how many times I've told her to just take a message instead of bothering him, but she won't. Last night this really bit me. Looks like I'll be having another conversation with them about calling my house whenever they feel like it for no good reason. Sigh.

I guess I should just be relieved that nothing resembling a crisis happened. :-)