Let There Be Light (I Wish)

OK, so here's the story. As part of the living room remodeling, we were thinking of replacing the ceiling fan in the living room, the dining room chandelier, and the entry way light. The ceiling fan is a big massive one that we brought with us when we moved, but it didn't seem to fit in with some of the changes. We've never liked the way the dining room light looks, plus two of the four bulbs don't regularly work (as in, even with a brand-new bulb they don't light. Except for every now and then, when they feel like it)--and the bulbs are non-standard ones that we never remember to have. The entry one was a simple silver tube with a square plate on the bottom, and a medium-sized white globe. It's never worked well, either, usually requiring a jiggling of the switch to get it to come one. A while ago it quit completely. As we were working, we realized we'd never checked if it had just burned out, or the light itself had quit working. At this point, we discovered that the globe was actually the light bulb--and it was burned out.

A week or so ago, as we were priming the ceiling in preparation of painting, we took down the ceiling fan. At this point, we were actually still deciding whether or not to replace it. I had the thought that we might be able to fix the entry light when we replaced its switch--I thought that might be the problem, since jiggling the switch made a difference. Then, a couple of days ago, we got to the point of painting the dining room and entry, so those lights needed to come down, too. When I took off the entry light, we decided the light was the problem, considering that the wires looked older than the actual house--I don't particularly feel comfortable with wires that look like they've been charred...

Yesterday we went to pick out lights, hoping for something complementary, as all three lights are in close proximity. That of course took some time. We went home, ate dinner, and I started on the installation project.

First up, the entry way. Unfortunately, it turns out the outlet box is recessed up into the ceiling--and the light we got has a long pole extending from the bracket that needs to extend through the half-globe glass to screw the bottom piece on that holds the glass. And with the bracket being up in the ceiling, it didn't reach. But, for now, the base of the light is installed with no cover, until I find the best solution to that problem.

So, that was disappointing. Next I turned to the ceiling fan. There was some confusion in my understanding of the instructions for taking off the downrod (our ceiling is too low for that kind of installation), and then it took some time to get the wires separated enough to attach to the motor--oh, and there was the fun part where I realized that when you took the light off the wires a week earlier, it's harder to remember to make sure the switch is in the off position before you start working on the wires--but after that it was pretty quick to get the whole thing installed. But that's when we realized that when the packaging referred to the lights as spot lights, it wasn't refering to styling or anything. No, three little spotlights. So we could very nicely light three small sections of our living room, but the rest of it was rather shadowy and dark. A nice atmospheric effect, perhaps, but not exactly ideal for normal living...

So, the ceiling fan had to come back down and go back into the box, and now this evening I'll try again with a new ceiling fan, plus a different chandelier (that goes better with the different ceiling fan), and hopefully fix the other mount as well...

Should I be worried that we've had thunderstorms all afternoon...?