Once upon a time, three birthday’s ago, a handsome prince bought his fair lady the most beautiful chandelier of them all. She loved it so much and couldn’t wait for its arrival, but alas – it was backordered due to the fact that many other fair ladies love the bright, bold colors of the chandelier. It wasn’t until two months since the initial purchase that the beloved chandelier arrived on the doorstep via a brown carriage. Hark! The chandelier arrived! The fair lady ripped open the box and studied all of the magical crystals that adorned this beautiful light fixture. The fair lady stored the chandelier in the closet to ensure safe keeping till the weekend, when the handsome prince could install it.
Cut to THREE YEARS LATER and the box is STILL IN THE CLOSET. That has to be a joke, right? Sadly it is no joke at all! Time ran away from us, and we’ve found ourselves in other projects other the years. Having just celebrated my 26th birthday, and I was given a chandelier as my 23rd birthday gift – I put my foot down with Andrew and was not settling anymore for this tom foolery.
With that being said, Sunday was the day to tackle this project. He ordered the chandelier from Urban Outfitters who are notorious with buying from offbeat venders, and often European venders. With that in mind, we had a feeling we were biting off more than we could chew getting this thing installed. (Especially since the box says to hire a professional.) But, Andrew was confident that hanging at least 4 light fixtures, and 2-3 fans in his day, that this would be no problem! I’m shaking my head while I type this, because this thought process is hilarious after experiencing what went down on Sunday.
Now, I will forewarn you in saying that I do not have step by step photos of the process since Andrew was getting pretty frustrated. I could only assume sayings like “Hold that pose!” “Stop! Let me get a shot of that before you rig it” while he was cursing the English, would have been a bad idea.
First things first. Time to rid ourselves of the boob light. We won’t miss this thing! Granted, it is the more attractive of the boob lights…but unnecessary.
Being able to get the original light down with such ease gave us a false sense of confidence and a little too much “Oh yeah! We got this!” behavior. It wasn’t until after we unboxed the chandelier and took a look at its hook up, did we decide that we jumped on the “We’re awesome” bandwagon a little too early.
You have no idea how much I wish I was able to take a photo of all of the mechanisms before Andrew took it apart to make it U.S. worthy. It was insane! Odd shaped irrelevant metal pieces, some weird circular piece that has now made its way into the trash, and a nut glued onto the handing rod which makes it very difficult to thread when hung…which you’ll read about soon enough.
Once we stopped scratching our heads, and ripping up the not so helpful instructions, we figured the best option was to just wing it. And wing it, we most certainly did. We were able to use the mounting bracket from the old fixture (which fit perfect! Amazingly enough.),which is great considering the chandelier itself was made to be mounted with a ceiling hook. We aren’t big fans of the hook, and wanted it mounted flush to the ceiling as much as possible.
Using the previous mounting bracket in the chandelier to mount it flush seems like a pretty easy thing. I hold the chandelier up while Andrew hooks everything up, and threads the nut onto the rod and voila! You’ve got yourself a hanging chandelier. That would seem easy, wouldn’t it? Well, not in this case. Apparently, the manufacturer thought it would be a good idea to GLUE the nut on the rod. What? Why? Why is that a good idea? (Just like why do people solder faucets to the backs of sinks? Is it just us that gets to deal with these things?) It made it impossible to take off. Finally with some elbow grease, we were able to unscrew it but it left all of its terrible glue residue all over the place. By this point, Andrew was so over the project – it’s not even funny. Between the issues of the weird wiring, taking the guts out and putting it back in, having to rig our bracket and ignore the chain hook… he’s over it. He feels defeated by a nut with glue on it! This is where Jessica Almighty kicks in with a bottle of Goof Off. “Don’t worry, I got this!” (Famous last words, people!)
20 minutes, a handful of Q-Tips, and one set of tweezers later – I finally had enough glue off the nut that would help it thread a little better. It was just enough to make it easier for Andrew to screw it in while I held it up to the ceiling. WOOOOOOOOO! Now, we could finally hook the wires and end what was now becoming 3 1/2 hours of my life I was never getting back.
Here is the brief version of Andrew hooking up the wires.
“I don’t know which wire is live and what connects to what.”
“Ugh. I’m just going to do it this way. Stick a bulb in it. And if it works, great. If not. Switch.”
“Hold on, I’ve got to turn the power back on in the bathroom.”
“Is it working?” (I have to tell him… nope!)
(Turns power back off, and runs inside. Switches wires over. Runs back out. Turns power on.)
“Is it working?” (I have to tell him no…again!)
{Insert extremely foul language here}
“There is no way I’m doing this wrong! It’s not that hard!”
We stare at each other for a while and ponder what went wrong. Then a light bulb (get it?) went off in my brain! There was a good chance that since the chandelier has been sitting in a box for the last three years, maybe the sockets for the bulbs aren’t pristine any longer. We took the bulb out of one socket, moved it to the next one, and LET THERE BE LIGHT.
Turns out the chandelier worked, the socket didn’t. Isn’t that just our luck? A pinch and a squeeze later, the chandelier was shining brighter than Cee-Lo’s teeth. (HAVE YOU GUYS SEEN HOW WHITE THEY ARE!?!)
Isn’t it GORGEOUS!? Completely worth the headache, and hours of Andrew sighing in the bathroom. But at least now he can say that he has successfully installed 5 light fixtures in his day. :-) However, he’s convinced it looks too big in the bathroom. I’m convinced it’s perfect. We’ve got a few tweaks to make in the bathroom in the future, so once all is said and done – we can really decide if it works. Which it will, because it has to since I love it. End of story.
Love,
J and A
