What I've been up to...

I am so proud of this latest project of mine. Back in July when we bought the house we spent a lot of time at Home Depot and I bought a nice ceiling fan/light I wanted to put in the kitchen (on clearance!). I told Randy "no rush, whenever" and although I know he's a busy guy, c'mon now, it's 9 months later and no fan installed.

So, those of you who know me...you know what comes next! I decided to put it up myself. I love the fact that I am pretty self-sufficient in the do-it-yourself department. And I pride myself that I can do just about anything. A long time ago I put up a ceiling fan into an existing light fixture and I didn't burn the house down. (For me, that's a sign of a job well-done: no fires, floods or broken body parts! haha) So I thought "I'll save my dear overworked husband time and install it myself." Okay, okay....I actually thought "I'll show HIM for waiting 9 *&#$ing months and it's STILL not done!" (Nothing like a little aggression and a type A personality for getting things accomplished.)

I knew that the 'old' ceiling fan had a bigger base than the new one and I needed a medallion to cover the excess. One trip to Lowe's and ACMoore and a night at the table painting the medallion to match some plates that I have on display in the kitchen and I had a beautiful ceiling decoration. I got the fan out of the garage and found that it had a brownish-gold finish. Ugh. Took that sucker back to Lowe's and got one with a brushed nickel finish to match the cabinet hardware.


Anyway, fast forward a couple hours and this is what I ended up with:

I love it! I obsessed over centering the fan on it and my friend Tara said "Don't worry, nobody ever looks up anyway." Um. No. EVERYBODY will look up at this because I will point it out whenever someone steps foot in my house. "LOOK WHAT I DID!!"

Note: Although it looks great in this picture, it didn't work and tripped the breaker when I turned the power back on. Randy came home at 8PM from motorcycle racing in NJ and was a "little" ticked that he had to fix it. Too bad for him. Unfortunately he couldn't figure out the screwy wiring the house has by himself either and my dad made a home-improvement house-call. They finished after 11PM.

Lesson learned for me: Don't care it didn't work...I still did it BY M-Y-S-E-L-F! Lesson learned for Randy: don't put off home-improvement projects that you know your wife will do by herself and you'll probably have to re-do at some late hour when you are totally exhausted with your wife standing nearby gloating.