Let There Be Light! - Lighting Design for the Casa (Part 1)

Happy Wednesday everyone! I hope that you are having a great week so far. We are trucking along on the house and have finally ordered all of our light fixtures! Woohoo!!! There is something about ordering the lights that makes me feel like we are getting close to completing this beast of a project (please sweet baby Jesus let it be so!!!!). Although it took a year of wading through thousands of options, picking out the light fixtures has been a blast! In my view, light fixtures are just like a good pair of glitzy chandelier earrings...they are a super fun accessory that can add some serious glamor to a room. And bringing some girly glam to the casa was very important to me because the tan/cream/bronze color scheme that we have selected for the first floor could very easily turn the house into a "Super Masculine Mancave" (my husband's ultimate fantasy) if I didn't force down Matt's throat add these pops of bling to each room. However, it took so long to pick the fixtures because of two major restrictions we have at the house. The first restriction is beyond our control...we have 8 foot ceilings. This makes life tricky because Matt and I are both fairly tall (6'1" and 5'9.5"), so there are several places in the house where we need fixtures that sit somewhat close to the ceiling (basically everywhere that a light isn't over a table or in the stairwell) so that we don't knock our cabezas every time we walk through the house. Unfortunately, I have discovered that "flush mount light" actually translates to "ugly as hell" in most languages. Which brings us to my second restriction, which is 100% self-imposed...NO BOOB LIGHTS!!!!!

 

 

Please don't get me wrong, I have nothing against ta-tas that are attached to a gals chest...however, I take serious issue to boobs that are attached to my ceiling. Maybe its boob envy, but I just don't like the idea of making our ceilings have a better figure than me! So after several hours of scrolling through multiple website, here are the flush mounts that have made the cut:

 

1. Visual Comfort Small Basil Flush Mount (for the Wrapping Closet) 

2. Pottery Barn Capiz Flushmount (for the Light Blue Bedroom)

3. Cone Shape Matte Silver Flushmount Ceiling Chandelier (for the Guest Bathroom)

4. Maxim Lighting Hi-Bay 2-Light Flush Mount (for the Study)

5. Quoizel Josslyn Flush Mount (for the Laundry Room)

6. Savoy House Alsace 3 Light Semi-Flush in Reclaimed Wood (for the Living Room)

 

The first five lights are either chrome or polished nickle because they go upstairs where we have grey walls and white trim in the Guest Bathroom, Study and Laundry Room, robin egg blue walls and white trim in the Light Blue Room, and bright pink walls, white trim and yellow ceiling in the Wrapping Closet (although Matt thinks that I am nuts, but it's super cute and my one Über girly room in the joint).  The light for the Living Room is wood and oil rubbed bronze, which hopefully will look pretty with the cream/tan walls and dark trim.  I cannot wait to see what these guys look like installed! That's all for now. Thanks so much for stopping by and have a great day!!!

 

Stop by here if you want to see some more funfilled "Non-Boob-Light" fixtures.

 

I am liking up with Love of Family and Home, My Repurposed Life, Design Dining & Diapers

 



Cabinets are Installed in the Study!!!

Hello everyone! I hope that you had a fantastic weekend because I sure know that I did! Matt came home from Aberdeen on Friday for a few days and my in-laws made it home safely after embarking on a two-month long safari through Africa (they are a seriously brave and adventurous pair). It was a weekend filled with happy homecomings and fantastic stories about my in-laws adventures over the pond. I also capped off the weekend at my mother's house for our weekly viewing of Game of Thrones (so freak'n awesome the week) and Mr. Selfridges (the show finally started getting juicy this week too). Good company and good times, it doesn't get much better than that! So after giving you the scoop last week about the DISASTER SET-BACK at the house, I am happy to share with you some actual progress that has been happening around the ol' casa...WE HAVE CABINETS!!!! Our custom cabinets for the study, laundry room, master and guest bathrooms, the game room and for a built-in next to the fireplace were installed and I couldn't be happier with how they turned out.  The post would be way too long if I showed you all the cabinets at once, so I have decided to break them out over a couple entries.  We are starting with the sweet new cabinets in the study/office to kick-off our little tour-o-cabinets. The study is at the top of the stairs and started out as a tiny 8' x 10' room with strange angled ceilings that made it pretty much useless.  The room is highlighted in yellow on the floor plan below.

 

And here is what the room looked like before demo started. 

 

 

Although the room was a cute and cozy, it was just too small (we could barely fit a chair and tiny desk in here) and desperately needed for its walls to be torn down to open the space up.  This is exactly what we did, and once the walls were removed, the tiny room turned into a large landing at the top of the new staircase.  You can see the new open landing highlighted in yellow on the floor plan below.

 

 Here is a view of the landing once the walls were removed and the drywall was installed. 

 

 

Since the landing was such a large and open space once the walls were removed, I thought the back wall would be a great location to put a large built-in desk.  I wanted to create a space that would allow for multiple work stations and give lots of storage.  So here is the design that I came up with:

This design allowed for us to have two large filing cabinets (the base cabinets on each end of the desk), two work stations, a large 36" base cabinet in the middle of the desks for printer and computer tower storage, four large upper cabinets to store all of our paper and office supplies and then some fun open shelves that I can fill with pictures and fun mementos.  Another goal was to keep the area light and bright (because there is not much natural light in the room), so I decided to go with bright white cabinets.  Here are some of the cabinets after they were delivered.

And here are the two filing cabinets.  I cannot wait to have one "go-to" location in the house to store our important documents.  It will make life so much easier to be organized!

And here are the cabinets installed (sorry for the poor picture quality and plastic covering over the base cabinets). I totally love how they turned out!!!

We still need to add the open shelves on the left side of the desk and the butcher block top, but this definitely constitutes progress in my book! Happy days oh happy days!!!

 Tomorrow I am going to show you the laundry room with its loverly cabinets, so I hope you swing back by.  In the mean time, thanks for dropping in and I hope that you have a fantastic day!!!

I am sharing this post on Pinworthy Projects, Inspire Me Please Link Party, Shine on Fridays and Catch as Catch Can Link Party