What a difference nice light fixtures make

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ctviggen

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What a difference nice light fixtures make
« on: 1 Jun 2014, 07:02 pm »
We bought a house where the owners did great work to the yard, but basically ignored the house.  There was little to no maintenance done.  Take, for instance, the light fixtures on the exterior of the house:



This is a closer image, although it's too bad I don't have an even closer image, as then you could see how truly bad the fixture is (it's pockmarked and looks terrible):



This is an image after I replaced the right light fixture:



A close up of the new light fixture:



It's amazing what nice light fixtures do to a house!  The bad news is that there are at least 8 light fixtures on the outside of the house, all of which have to be replaced, as do the white background pieces.  Yikes!  And that doesn't include another four light fixtures that have multiple bulbs in them, and all of them need to be replaced too.  The really bad thing is the former owners' style isn't our style, so all of the interior lights need replacing too.  I can see why they put cheap, crappy light fixtures in, as it'll take us a few years to afford to replace the light fixtures.

JLM

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Re: What a difference nice light fixtures make
« Reply #1 on: 1 Jun 2014, 11:35 pm »
Lighting is the primary 'unknown' sign of amateur versus professional design. 

Your new fixture is similar to what we installed when we built 9 years ago (yep we needed 7 lights and as I recall they were about $60 each).  We also have grey siding/white trim, even used brushed nickel hardware throughout the house.  I used "contractor" (130 volt) incandescent bulbs throughout that last longer than the standard 120 volt versions.  As we don't use them much, I'm not interested in swapping them out for LED's (fluorescent don't work well in the cold).  If you're interested in LED, try looking for enclosed fixtures to keep insects out.  Over the years I've started replacing incandescent with fluorescent or LED.  Of course all fixtures should match (indoors or out).

As far as the interior goes, we used lots of recessed can fixtures and track lighting that uses 65 watt flood lamps (about 30) as they were cheap ($10 each with 130 volt bulbs from Home Depot).  Most of the rest are individual upturned bowls (wifey bought them cheap on-line but didn't order before the dining room light was discontinued).  And her boys have broken two of the bowls (unfortunately one is on the entry chandelier that has bigger bowls than the rest).  So you might want to bite the bullet and look for "big boy" brands from a lighting shop.

Ericus Rex

Re: What a difference nice light fixtures make
« Reply #2 on: 2 Jun 2014, 12:30 pm »
Looks great!

A word of advice; if you want the same look all around you should go ahead and buy all of them now.  If you wait even a few months you run the risk of your style or finish being discontinued.