Monica Wants It: My Chandelier. Or not.

I’ve never done electrical stuff before, like installing a hardwire fixture, but after watching some YouTube videos I felt confident I could do it. And by confident, I mean completely clueless, but willing to try. Like most Disney stars. (Aww, poor Demi Lovato though…)

During Labor Day weekend, I caved and bought a chandelier for the foyer because I wanted something fancy-schmancy when you walked into my house. I had my eye set on one from Overstock, and one evening I went and it said they only had 2 left. I bought it on the spot!

Here she is:

(If you like this fixture and want to buy it, click here. But you might not if you keep reading…)

So, it sat in the box for awhile, until this past weekend when I got a wild hair up my butt and decided to try installing it all by lonesome. DH was at work, so I was seriously ALL alone. I thought I’d have it up in 30 minutes, ooh and ahh a bit, blog about it, and drink some beer.

Boy was I wrong.

Let me walk you through my experience. Ready?

The first thing you should do whenever you’re working with anything that could shock ya is to turn off the power on the breaker box. Ours was labeled for us, but if not, you need to figure out which switch turns off the power to the area you’re working in. That is SUPER important, mkay?

Next, gather stuff you’ll need. For me it was a ladder/step stool & a cordless drill. I highly recommend not using a chair to do this sorta thing.

So, here’s a picture of the light fixture when we moved in:

Small, brassy, tacky.

Step 1: TURN OFF THE POWER. I can’t stress this enough.

Step 2: Use a drill (cordless or regular) to remove the old light fixture. Be careful of any glass components. I also kept everything from the light fixture just in case I completely screwed up and needed to put it back. You never know people. Your area should look like this:

Step 3: Attach new chandelier mounting bracket (silver thing in the middle) and connect the wires (usually black, white & ground). This is where my installation went terribly wrong. In the above picture you can see the mounting bracket (silver), white wire, black wire, and the ground wire is up in there, too. My chandelier has 2 clear + 1 ground wire. And I was doing this all by lonesome=not easy.

See what I mean?

I went to YouTube, found nothing. Googled, found nothing. So what did I do?

Yeah, I ate the bag. Not literally the bag, but you know.

Tried it one way…nada.

Tried it another way…still nothing.

Then I cursed, called the hubby, ate at McDonald’s, went to Wal-Mart and came home and did this instead:

Lurve. It only took me about 20 minutes, was super easy, and I felt so empowered that I DID IT. Furthermore, it works better than my original idea because when you walk into our front door you can go to hallway to the left (bedrooms), go straight into the living room or go to the right into my office/dining room. It just makes sense. Oh, and it was easy, too.

You also can’t beat the $25 price tag.

My $125 chandy? Yeah, it’s sitting on the floor in timeout. It may become our master bedroom light or maybe the dining room. Have any of you all ever installed a chandelier that didn’t have color-coded wires? Am I doomed? Should I hire an electrician? He charges $65 an hour, and I am cheap!

Besides waste 4 hours of my time, I did some thrifting on Saturday. Can I just say that thrifting is sooo relaxing? I got up early on Saturday, had breakfast and some coffee, then thrifted for about an hour or two. Divine. What did I find? Lemme show ya!

Pair of really tall, silver/mirrored candle holders- $4.00 for the pair. Can’t wait to use these on my mantel at Christmas time.

Some candlesticks for 30-cents each. Loved the colors. Goodwill has such great stuff!

A hurricane (tall!) with a glass base for $2.00 (Kinda hard to see…) Also from Goodwill.

Some pretty pillows, $1.50 for the pair! But my most fave item? This gorgeous, plush, tan velvet chair with nailhead trim. SWOON. She was 50% off, so I got the chair for only $45! That may seem high for a chair, but I love supporting my local Goodwill, and I love the style/shape/quality. Totally worth the money.