Re-Wired: Let There Be Light

It's been a long week but a really productive one. The main focus of our remodel this week was rewiring the main electrical in all of our bedrooms. It's been something we've wanted to do since we moved in, but didn't really know where to start. After having an electrician take a look at it during our kitchen remodel, we knew it would be a chunk of our budget, but knew it would be worth it to complete it during our bedroom remodel.

Our main problem was that when the house was originally built, none of the bedrooms were wired for lighting. Speaking with some of our neighbors, we learned that at some point a local "handy (and I use that term super loosely) man" came through several of the houses on the street and put in recessed lighting right in front of all the closets. They don't bring in a lot of light and they are a bit of a fire hazard...one of our neighbors had them burn through some insulation and cause major damage.

The other main problem was that our ceiling fans in each room weren't connected to a switch. We weren't all to sure where they all may have been wired from, but we knew there was one major concern...the front bedroom's ceiling fan was connected up through the attic to an extension cord plugged into a wall in the basement. We don't know a lot about electricity, but that couldn't be safe and it had to go.

These little lights can cause a lot of damage

We called in the experts and are really glad we did...after a complete 8 hours of working on the wiring, even the electrician was stumped on some of the things he saw. And then we saw that our main outlets were all hooked up and wired through this little guy:

Yep, that's a split extension cord

The electrician was even surprised that it held up all these years, but he hooked up new connections with legit wiring so our rooms are a lot safer. We will probably remove the recessed lighting at some point and patch up the holes, but we'll save that for a later date. Now that the wiring was hooked up correctly, we were ready to work on the new fixtures.

Remember how much fun we had putting up the ceiling fan in the kitchen? Yeah, not so much...and the best part, we had not one, but three rooms to do. We decided to get 2 builder grade fans with lights in the two main bedrooms so Brian went straight to work getting those up. After a couple blown breakers and a new light switch he was able to get the two new fans up and we finally had real light in both rooms.

New light in our front room...it's a little rumpled, but it has been acting as our closet, don't judge :)

Back bedroom fan...no more ugly chain! (Yes, the hooks are still there...for now)

Then it was time to tackle the master bedroom. I hate ceiling fans...I think they are super unattractive and just plain boring. However, they are really good at keeping the temperature regulated and air circulated. Plus Brian has to have a fan in the room...it was either an ugly box fan in the window, or a ceiling fan. He was willing to let me have a chandelier, but I just didn't think I could live with a box fan forever. So I had an idea and hoped it would be a decent compromise...what if we could do both?

I've done a lot of research on different lighting and fans, but I couldn't find anything that wasn't crazy expensive or hideous looking. After looking at our old fan, I started thinking about adding a shade and a little crystals. We found a lampshade for $12 and decided to reuse some of the parts from our old fixtures...that way, if it turned out terrible, we were only out $12.

We started by spray painting the old fan blades, dome and hardware:

A little paint goes a long way

 Then we attached the motor and the dome to the ceiling.

Champagne spray paint and opened the wiring to attach the light

 Now the tricky part...we decided to add a lamp shade to the light kit to attach to the fan. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, we ran into a lot of challenges...first being we only saved pieces to 2 different fans, one that had a light originally attached and one that didn't. After lots of frustration, several wire changes and lots of YouTube videos we finally found the correct wires to connect and make it work. Then came the other challenge...adding the lamp shade to the light kit. We tried several things before we realized we needed a longer hollow screw so that we could tighten and secure the shade between the kits. After a quick trip to the hardware store, Brian came back with a long enough hollow screw so we could assemble everything together (and only spent $0.95).

This is my VERY patient husband assembling the pieces. 

 Then we hooked the wiring back up and screwed all the pieces together:

Left the plastic on until the final verdict

Almost done! Because I wanted to add a little glam to the boring ceiling fan, I found some crystals at the local craft store and started stringing them together ($19 total).

Who doesn't love crystals?

Then Brian uses some old wire clothes hangers to rig together a place for me to hang the crystals. We made sure to keep everything away from the light and switched up the length a few times, but I am pretty happy with the overall look.

I actually really like it!

Another view

I think it's kind of fun and it ties in the look of the whole room a bit better. Plus it only cost us $32! Functional with a little bit of sparkle, a nice compromise :)

We also decided to tackle the wiring for the television. We mounted our television to open up some more space in our room and get rid of the ugly TV console but the main problem was that the ugly wires hung straight down and looked like a jumbled mess. If we could figure out how to move the outlet, we wanted to move most of the cords and the internet routers to the closet. Good news, my dad was in town and came over to make sure that we didn't electrocute ourselves. My mom and I let the boys work on the outlet while we did more painting, so all we have are some pictures of what they did:

Finding the studs so that we could move the TV wires

Pulled out all the cords and moved everything inside the closet

After rewiring and moving the outlet inside the closet

Patching up the walls with some drywall and mud

That wasn't the only thing we completed this week, but definitely one of the biggest. We brought up some of the finished pieces of furniture and after lots of deliberation, we decided to skip building a custom closet and spent the money we saved from the ceiling fan on a customize-able closet kit. Here's a sneak peak:

New closet system! Still a lot of work to put it together, but no painting!

We still have lots to do, but we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Right now, Brian is finishing up the crown moulding so we will have more to share once it's finished later this week. For now, we will try and relax for the rest of the evening. :)

XOXO,

Sara, Brian & Tequila

Callie came by to help too!

While we were working inside, someone else was doing some work outside (totally innocent face)