Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Day 38: Lighting Roundup

Day: 38
Schedule: On
Prognosis for Survival: Steady

Work's been a bit slow coming out of the holiday weekend, but that was in the schedule. Yesterday, templates for the counters was made. This morning we met with the contractor and the designer to look at a few details and to nail down one of two small things. The designer also brought along several of the new light fixtures for the kitchen.

The old kitchen was primarily lit by a lot of flourescent lights mounted in a dropped ceiling that had textured plastic panels, creating an effect where it looked like the entire ceiling was a light ... when the bulbs and ballasts were behaving. Evelin's hated it since day 1 (or Day −5070 by the timeline we're using on this blog).

So we needed a new ceiling light for the kitchen, and some pendant lights for over the peninsula (which have the added benefit of helping to divide space between the dining room and kitchen), a new globe for the dining room chandelier (after the accident with the electricians), and some sort of lighting over the kitchen sink.

The over-the-sink light became an issue because the current trend, apparently, is a penant of some sort in that space, which struck me as a horrible idea. The more examples I was shown, the worse it looked. After a bunch of back and forth (no-one liked my idea of recessed lighting in the ceiling), we ended up with a solution where two downward-facing sconces would be in the wall above the window.

Undercabinet lighting was also a question mark since we don't have many hanging cabinets. There is a light built into the undercabinet radio, but it only covers a little bit of space. By the mixer, since the microwave mounts above it and there's no way to mount a light directly to that, there was a lot more angst about the options than expected. I think we have come up with a solution that works, but I guess it won't be for certain until the electrician starts to wire things up.

Outside, I really wanted to make sure we were using dark-sky friendly fixtures. Although most of the online stores have dark-sky friendly as an option to search with, it's not clear they're always accurate in categorizing the fixtures. And not all of them are IDA-certified as dark-sky friendly. We needed lights for the deck and over the kitchen door. Since I was looking at light fixtures, I ended up getting one to replace the existing porch light (which proved a reminder of the joys of old-house wiring).

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