Ugly Lamp Revamp

I've been updating some areas of our house, and one area I've been neglecting for some time is the light on our front porch.

Ya, isn't it fabulous? Not only is the fixture old and pretty ugly it's also shot. We had an electrician look at it and he said the fixture is broken and needs to be replaced. I've been looking for a new one for a while so we can have some light on our front porch and finally had some luck!

I had gone to our local Habitat ReStore and found this:

The flower top piece isn't exactly my taste, and the color doesn't exactly go with our house color. But for the price I can work with it. I had some left over Rustoleum Brown Textured spray paint from my curtain rod project I thought could work. So I set to work taking the fixture apart and spray painted it.

Once that was all finished up it was time to hang it. I thought this post would just be about spray painted a new fixture and hanging, but our home was built in the 1930's and a lot of work has been done to it over time. As we've lived here and done work we've found a lot of things have been not been done correctly in the past.

This for example is not what you want to see when you take a fixture down. There was a small hole drilled in the bead board and the wires run up through it into the great unkown (AKA our attic.) There should be a junction box here, I should be able to rewire the fixture outside. But there's not. So it looks like I'll have to make a trip up to the attic and see what is really happening here. Typical old house adventures, my simple light re-hang has turned into a large project!

Ok, up in the attic I find this. Now I am not an electrician but I know this isn't exactly correct. (I did an internship at a lighting store so I think I'm pretty hot stuff when it comes to rewiring things but as the Hubs can attest to this is not always a good thing.)  Whoever lived here before ran a line off the original junction box to the center of the ceiling of the porch. It still works but is not the best solution. For the time being I went a head and rewired the new fixture in the attic. Our handyman is coming out later this week to do some exterior work and I'll ask him to double check it for me.

 

Here it is all hung up and ready for a test run! I think the brown complements the paint of the house much better than white would have.

Success! We have light!

And an overall shot. I am so thankful to be able to come home at night to lit porch and be able to see the keyhole to get in the door! 

Have you ever had any unexpected surprises while working on your home or on a project?

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