The Lights

Installing light fixtures must be one of the most satisfying parts of any renovation. After viewing the bathroom via the harsh florecent work light for months, it is nice to see the bathroom under the actual light it will have.

Attaching the fixtures is a piece of cake but I still have some gripes. I have yet to come across a company that accounts for "old work" electrical junction boxes. This is what us folks changing the location of the light fixtures have to replace the original boxes with. The "old work" boxes have extra stuff that usually happens to be in the way of where screws need to go to attach the new fixture. So once again, I found myself having to custom cut the screws with a hack saw...very anoying, especially since all they had to do was give me a few smaller screw sizes. Cheap bastards.

Okay, another gripe. This particular lighting company provides wire nuts that are way to large to fit through the mounting plate slots on the mounting plate they provide. This means, if you attempt to use the wire nuts they provide, you can't actually attach the light against the wall because the wire nuts will not fit (i.e., they are so big the light will stick out from the wall and the wire nuts would be visible). Are these people morons? It is easy to fix by just using your own, smaller wire nuts or cutting a hole in their metal mouting plate but the oversight is nearly impossible to catch until you've gone through the trouble of wiring the fixture and attempting to push it into place over the junction box.

One final thought on these lights. We had a hard time finding wrought-iron-style lighting fixtures so we went with these. Upon buying them, it appeared possible to mount them flipped up or down. Unfortunatly, the glass lamp shades are actually only designed to aim the light up. This is stupid because they are marketed as bathroom vanity lights. They look pretty in the picture but they actually shine more light on the ceiling than on your face (as you look in the mirror). Dumb. Another case of style over function, as is often found with home fixtures. Maybe someday we'll replace them.