And Then There Was Light

Hello! Welcome back to your weekly update on Wallpaper Acres and boy do we have an update for you!

First, John and I did end up in MI this weekend to celebrate my Grandma's 90th birthday. What a celebration and great time with family. It was truly magical to spend this milestone with her and the entire family.

This week at Wallpaper Acres we saw some major progress both in paint and in lighting! John spent Monday and Tuesday focusing on paint and getting a second coat on all the walls and priming the remaining upstairs hallway and rooms that still needed it. To say we are happy with our paint choices is an understatement...we absolutely love them! The paint sprayer is still making easy work on the project but like I mentioned in the previous post, it does take a decent amount of time to prep the space for paint.

The other exciting development this past week was lighting. When we bought Wallpaper Acres, there was a severe lack of lighting. Two of the main rooms had switches but absolutely no light fixture present. And the lights that were there, were not the best at doing their job of providing light...so we knew that this would be something that would need to be addressed prior to moving in.

John researched and researched and watched numerous lighting/electrical tutorials and still did not feel 100% confident in his abilities. Lucky for us, we have a great resource in John's 2nd cousin, Mark. We ultimately decided to use a professional for two main reasons:

1. We did not feel confident in our abilities and did not want to be responsible for making a small mistake in electrical to have a bigger issue on our hands at a later date

2. We wanted to remain on schedule. John and I wholly believe that sometimes it is ok to admit when you need help and what would have taken us roughly 1 month to figure out, took us 2 days to complete with Mark's help.

Mark came out and worked with John on Wednesday and Thursday to install LED wafer lights throughout the house. Some rooms already had the electrical ran and just needed the light added where others had to have wiring added and ran from the light switches. On Wednesday, their efforts were halted by a thunderstorm turned tornado warning that wiped out electricity to the neighborhood. Though that seems intuitive to have the power off when doing electrical, it gets too dark too early so they could not keep working safely with no additional lighting. On Thursday, they were able to get started and after some discussing decided to cut the holes for the lights going into the formal dining and formal living room by removing subfloor from the rooms above and cutting the holes from above. This will save time from patching holes in the ceiling. The master was the first room they did this method and they thought the subfloor was just screwed in and it would be easy to lift it up and then put it back in...it was also nailed and glued...so we will be replacing that piece of subfloor. The next room, they learned from the master and just cut small holes and only have small sections to put back in instead of replacing the entire board. This method did ultimately save the façade of our ceilings and I am glad that they thought of this solution.

Tips from John on lighting:

1. Cut hole smaller for the lights as you can always make them bigger, not the other way around.

2. They are quite easy to do if you hire a professional or know what you are doing. You will spend some time getting the job done but it will look great in the end.

Examples of our lighting is below:

(Left photo: John found these lights that have a nightlight feature that illuminates under the wafer when you turn off and turn on the lights within 3 seconds. I LOVE this feature! We put these lights in our kitchen, laundry room, and master bedroom. John also used his laser level to get the lights in a straight line.)

(Right Photo: We found this sputnik light at Habitat for Humanity roughly a month ago. It was listed at $75 and when we looked it up, it retailed for $850. We were a bit apprehensive that it would work so Mark and John hooked it up and it worked! I think this was a great find!)

I am so excited that we now have adequate lighting in the house and no longer have to work with work lamps. We are seeing the house through a completely new lens and the house feels even bigger than before! The goals for the upcoming week are to finish up the paint upstairs and build an accent wall in the formal dining room (John was inspired by the bedroom accent wall and I think that it will add character to the space as well).