Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Baby's Light Fixture

Remember this old fixture?



There was one in our bedroom, the guest room, the hallway, and the baby's room! Either someone before us really liked this fixture, or must have gotten a great deal on them!

Either way, I knew they needed to go (and FAST!) We've already replaced the hallway fixture and our bedroom fixture. Next up...the baby's fixture.

As you already know, I love getting all the daily sale emails from sites like Rue La La, Joss & Main, ideeli, and HauteLook. I rarely buy anything, and when I do, I try my best to research the items before purchasing as most things cannot be returned. One day I found this light fixture that I thought would be fantastic in the baby's room. It was on sale for about $300 off the retail price. I made a point of researching the brand that made it, found the fixture on their website, and called their customer service number to ensure the fixture could be altered to suit our needs, etc... I felt comfortable ordering it after having had all my questions answered. Much to my surprise the fixture arrived within days (not weeks as I was told.) It's very exciting when that happens!

Anyhow a couple weekends ago I put the husband to work installing the new fixture. I usually help, but this time I promised to do so from a chair in the baby's room rather than standing on a ladder. After opening the box, we discovered that this was the only instructions given for putting all the parts together. Not really sufficient if you ask us! There were no words at all. Just one page with a picture that wasn't exactly clear.



Here are some of the parts:


Now you should know the husband is pretty much an expert at these things...and he couldn't figure the darn thing out! After analyzing what was sent and calling Dad B for advice, we decided to have an electrician come install the new fixture. We felt like we'd given up too easily, but we knew there was no way we'd be able to figure out the wiring. It was quite wacky and not at all like what we'd seen in the past. We knew we had other electrical projects for the electrician so we figured that we might as well save ourselves the trouble and just have him do everything we wanted done at once.

The next weekend the electrician came out to check out what needed to be done at the house, said no problem, and we scheduled a day for him to come do all the work.

The following Thursday the electrician got to work. After doing his other projects, he attacked the fixture...only to find out that it was indeed like nothing he'd ever dealt with. We weren't crazy! The poor guy spent an entire day installing it! He had to retrofit the darn thing to work! Of course I called to check in and learned all this information, but at this point it would have been silly to just give up. So our little sale priced fixture, plus a full day of electrician's work turned out to be a big ole waste of $$$. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the new fixture and it's perfect for the baby's room, but it cost us an absolute fortune when all was said and done.

Oh and I didn't mention that he didn't even finish installing the darn thing. We spend another hour putting the rest of it together when we got home that night.

I know what you're thinking...enough talk. Let's just see the finished product!

Ok here it is!


By the way...can you see the blue box poking out? We weren't thrilled about that so the electrician went back to the house yesterday to remedy this situation. I figure for a full day's worth of work-it should have looked finished at least! Here's another picture because I love this fixture so much...but imagine it now with a larger plate that covered the electrical box. Looks much better!


Like it?

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