Light It Up! Creating Stylish Lighting On The Cheap

Happy first few weeks of Summer friends!  

We've been spending our time enjoying the sunshine, our backyard swingset, exploring the local parks, and having lots of "water days'. So far, so good. 

Lucky for us, long days of playing outside mean early bedtime for the kiddos. And as any parent knows, the most productive hours of the day typically happen after the sun has gone down and your "helpers" are away in dreamland. 

Among larger projects like updating the trim and finishing the mudroom makeover, I've been slowly working my way through the house addressing our light fixture situation. Our "fixuation" if you will. 

From the moment I saw the listing pictures, immediatly I thought to myself, "Well these have to go" to pretty much every single light in the house. Nothing about them brought me joy. Their color, their shape, their resemblance to a certain part of the female anatomy, nothing. In fact, right in the middle of move-in day, my mother-in-law accidently stood up under one of the chandeliers and busted the glass dome into a million pieces. Thank goodness she was unharmed, but in the middle of her endless appologies I finally had to hold my hands up and shout "I HATE ALL OF THESE LIGHTS! It is MORE than OK that you just broke one!"

But replacing all of your light fixtures can be a pricy task, so I didn't want to try and purchase everything at once. So the first item of business came up during Black Friday, we pulled the trigger on this brass chandelier from Wayfair. 

I love the crazy arms and how you can adjust the height and orientation of them. The brass coloring wasn't quite what I envisioned though, so one day a light bulb went off (ha) and I bought myself some Rub 'n Buff to add more brassy-ness to it's finish. 

It was after that moment that things really took off. Rub 'n Buff is SUCH an easy way to bring that warm antique gold to almost any surface. So instead of purchasing new lights for our kitchen, toy room, and hallway, I just buffed the current semi-flush ones we had, and honestly, I really love how they turned out! The old style that turned me off so much before, suddenly had my heart fluttering. 

Funny story, so remember how my MIL head-butted one light? Well her son took out another. Poor Eric was doing dishes one evening and crashed into the hanging light above the sink, shattering the (ugly) shade. Which gave me the perfect excuse to swap it for somethig more modern. 

And most recently, the many boob-lights that were upstairs in our hallway and closet are now brassy and classy! Those were just $23 flush lights from Costco, major save from the similar designs you'll find for $70 or more. 

If you follow me on Instagram, you'll for sure have seen the adventure of this beaded beauty. She's a Facebook Marketplace find for $60 and right now is on Overstock for over $480! She is sooooo pretty, and I was overjoyed when Eric figured out how to remove the chains and make her work for our mudroom. 

So that's where we are right now! A few purchases, but overall we really just utilized what we had by jazzing things up a bit. There's still our bathrooms and laundry room to do, as well as upgrading all bedrooms with ceiling fans. 

But you know, one bulb at a time.

To turn the light off on this topic, I'll leave you with some pretty satisfying before and afters. 

Have you ever used Rub 'n Buff? What other tips and tricks do you know for updating light fixtures? How many boob lights are in YOUR house? 

Check out all of our home improvements, by visiting the OUR NEST page.

After Christmas Trimming

Anyone else make a huge "Christmas Break To-Do" list? All of those things you've been putting off pre-holidays, hoping you'll find time to be productive after the reindeer stampede passes and the tinsel settles?

We sure did, and boy was it over ambitious. HA! 

After finishing Eleanor's Nursery, we hadn't made any additional progress on our goal of replacing the trim throughout the house. So we decided THAT would be our project; update the trim in our bedroom, the toy room, and maybe get started on the dining room. 

Once we returned home from the holidays (with a week until either of us went back to work) we cleared our schedules, sent the kids to daycare for a few days, and got down to business! 

Fast forward to Friday, and we found ourselves about 85% complete...with one room...and that's it. 

Overall, I was still pretty impressed by how much we got done with only two kid-less days. Was it everything we set out to accomplish? No. Did we still feel pretty great since most of the time was spent juggling a caulking gun in one hand and an 11-month-old in the other? You betcha. 

The entire process went decently smooth too. We used a crowbar to pry off the old trim, picked up all of the new from Home Depot, prepped, painted, then cut each piece down to size. Mr. Harrison even got to help. 

Eric used his swanky new nail gun hooked up to the air compressor to make quick work of tacking the pieces into place. Then my job was to follow with putty filling in the nail holes and sweeping...lots and lots of sweeping. 

Next, we sanded, caulked around everything to fill the gaps, and lastly touched up any white or purple paint that needed love. We used caulk in Eleanor's room too, it created a nice seamless finish, so we wanted to do the same here. 

I'm obsessed with the high contrast between the dark walls and the white trim, plus the thicker size and colonial detail around the doors brings in so much extra character. 

It's taken a little over a year, but this room is finally shaping up! For some reason our home improvement and decorating pace has slowed the more offspring we add. Figures. 

The last big update I'd like to make in this space is painting all the doors. I'm toying with the idea of black for the interiors, and then white for the closets and bathroom. Or maybe just white for everything, I haven't quite made up my mind yet. 

How our room is coming together brings me so much joy. The dark and moody Plum Brown color is such a change from anything we've done in the past. I can't wait to bring in more art, plants, some furniture, and soon hang two more curtains on those bare windows. Of course, that will just give Harrison another prime hiding spot for his new favorite game; hide-and-go-seek. 

Your bedroom should give you all the good feels, and considering every time I walk into ours I look at the trim and do a little happy dance, I'd say we're succeeding. 

Check out all of our home improvements, by visiting the OUR NEST page.