Hey, I'm crafty too!

Although it may seem that all I do is work on farm-related stuff around here, I actually have a house and occasionally do home decorating kind’a stuff.  Nothing as adventurous as Mama Tea's furniture refinishing or on as large of a scope as a kitchen remodel like Mama Pea, Amanda or Leigh, but I’m a little bit crafty when I want to be….and can find the time.

So instead of showing you pictures of my heat-battered and pathetic garden or bore you with stories of slow-cooker chicks today,  I will attempt to cause you to yawn at least a few times (or entirely skip this post even) and show off one of my few & far between home decorating repurposing projects.

Our house is log, so the interior / exterior walls are, well, logs.  The theme (if you can call it that) in most of the house is woodsy / country / outdoor’ish.  Most of the interior walls are some sort of green, there are wooden baskets everywhere, animal décor on the walls, and the ever-popular (and stylish if I might add) ball of cat fur stuck in the corners and under the buffet table.  Anyhow.

The former owners didn’t share my decorating ideas.  It looked very 80’s in here.  The wallpaper was pastel colored brush strokes, lots of gold hardware and lighting, plush carpeting (even in the bathrooms & kitchen…ick!!!), etc.  Something you wouldn’t expect to see inside a log home.  But oh well.

In the six years we’ve been here, I’ve gradually redecorated to suit my tastes.  The first thing to go (in like only five days after we closed on the house) was the carpeting.  Then the wallpaper.  Paul turned the oddly laid-out and huge master bathroom into a more user-friendly master bath and a separate guest bath.  Put in a wood burning stove.  Last year I put in laminate flooring in the bedroom.  Had vinyl flooring put in the kitchen to replace the carpeting.  

But back to my new not-so-difficult-but-darned-attractive project.

The chandelier above the kitchen table was an eye-blinding gold-tone.  I hated it every time I looked up at it.  And every time I found myself at the home improvement store in town, I’d walk down the lighting isle and dream about one day forking over the cash to replace my bling-bling kitchen lighting with a more rustic looking chandelier.

But I’m cheap.  And hate to think that there wasn’t something I could do with that stupid light fixture.

I’d had a pretty good idea what I was going to do with it for a while now, but just didn’t have the courage to start the project.  And now that I realize how simple it was, I kick myself for not doing it sooner.

Here’s the bling-bling chandelier before (I didn’t think to take a picture of it until after I started to take it down):

And here’s my new-to-me, rustic looking kitchen light:It only cost me about $12 to do it.  All I did was take apart all the little fittings and cleaned them and the main fixture up with some soap and water.  Hung up the fixture outside and put all the little pieces on a paper bag to dry.  When they were dried, I just sprayed them with Rust-Oleum multicolor textured spray paint.  I did have to spray them twice, three times in some difficult to reach spots, but it wasn’t difficult at all.

I originally put the fixture back up with the glass shades unchanged, but it didn’t look right.   So I got another can of non-textured spray paint and gave the interior sides of the shades a light coating.  At first I thought it looked too dark, but I’m used to it now and am happy as a clam.  (Where the heak did that phrase come from? And honestly, does anyone really know if they’re happy???)

So now I’m looking around the house at all the other light fixtures and gold-toned hardware and wondering if I can stop myself from painting them all!

Paul's Take
So she says to me one evening, "I saved you $100!".  She meant by not buying a new light for the kitchen.  But she still spent $12 on paint and the fuel to get to the store (twice, by the way).  So how did spending $20 on repainting a perfectly good light fixture save me money? 
I don't get it.