May 02nd, 2018

Yesterday I kept thinking it must be cloudy outside because it felt gloomy inside.  What the heck?  I checked repeatedly out the window. Cloudless sunny blue sky, so that's not it. Maybe I have a light bulb burned out?  Nope.   I know it's not my eyes because they just got fixed and now are better than ever! I looked closer at the kitchen light fixtures. Ahhh. That's it.  They need to be cleaned.

​The lights in the kitchen were the last decision we made during the reno.  And, like every other renovation decision, we gave it serious consideration. We looked at a lot of lights in a lot of different stores. We looked online.  We looked in catalogues. We checked both small, exclusive light stores and the light sections of bigbox stores. 

​The considerations were many and varied.  Price, of course had to be one of the things. But the light couldn't just look good, it had to actually provide light (what a concept!). Ambience has to be considered. And, honestly, form was just as imperative as function.  We plan on having these lights for however long we live in this house, so they had to be something we enjoyed seeing.  Whatever we chose had to kind of "go" with the rest of our decorating vibe.  

​Everyone asked, at all of these various stores what our style is, to help direct us.  And, as I've stated before, we don't know what our style is.  I'm sure there is a name for it, we just don't know (or care) what it is. Regardless of what we are looking for, it always ends up the same way.  We just know it when we see it.  And that is what happened with the lights we chose. We liked them right away and put it on the "possibles" list.  But ultimately, we found ourselves comparing every other light fixture to these and finally, we committed.  

​There are eleven, count 'em, eleven lights involved with this project which sounds excessive, but it's really not.  The fixture over the kitchen table has 8 lights all on it's own.  Two pendants over the peninsula and one over the sink.  

​If I were going to describe them I'd say, mostly, they look like mason jars.  It's a lot of glass.  Which means a lot of light, but it also means a lot of cleaning. I am terrified every single time that I am going to drop and break one.

Just like the mason jars they resemble, the glass part just unscrews from the top.   But it does require a footstool.  For me, so many things do.

So over and over I climb up and unscrew one glass "jar" after another, carefully place it on the towel on the table, climb back down and walk it to the sink, until I have a sink full of glass cylinders. Eventually the sink looks like it should be in a mad scientists laboratory.

One at a time, I carefully wash each cylinder and rinse it in hot vinegar water (for the sparkle!) and set them on yet another nice soft towel on the countertop.  I do this so very carefully, holding each one with both hands so as not to drop it.  Not only am I clumsy by nature, but my arthritic little hands have a tendency to bobble things even more than I used to.  Bear in mind that  I don't want to leave fingers prints on my newly cleaned glass globes, so I am holding these with a smaller, thinner towel to carefully convey each one to where it needs to be.  

Ever so gently, I dry each globe thoroughly and at long last, back I go to the stepstool.  One cylinder at a time goes back and screws into the fixture until Finally, without having broken a single one, I can step back, turn on the lights and taadaa!  It's beauteous!  What a difference!​

I think I held my breath the entire time because I found myself taking deep restorative breaths afterward.  Check one more things off the to-do list.  I always feel so accomplished when it's done.

And now, I hate to admit it, but the windows need to be washed next, inside and out. Dang.  I'll be dragging the stepstool out again.