The day of the lights...

The day of the lights...  It was too darned cold out yesterday for me to work outside, so I spent much of the day installing new light fixtures.  The first one – a chandelier for a little room upstairs we're calling the “reading room” – turned out to be a much bigger challenge than I was expecting.  In the first photo below, you can see that the junction box is mounted off-center in the place constructed for it.  I can't imagine why someone would do that, but they did.  Naturally, the chandelier we bought needed every bit of that space; it wouldn't fit if mounted directly to the box.  So I had to fabricate an adapter plate (see second photo) to allow the mounting bolts to be off-center from the junction box – but in the exact center of the mount.  In the third photo you can see that my plate worked.  The next two photos show the chandelier installed – it looks great in that room (Debbie picked these lights, of course).

Then I installed two new lights for our entrance way (the last two photos).  The existing lights were coyote-ugly, and had tiny little 8 watt lamps that were so dim I used a flashlight there at night.  The news ones have 60 watt bulbs and are vastly more attractive...