DIY | Operation Home

… Um, a little breakfast nook action? Er, wait…. A delightful little post about our breakfast nook! BAM!

So, when we moved in, the breakfast nook was one of the very few areas of our home that needed little to no work…

I loved the flooring, paint color, trim, and don’t even get me started on that awesome sunlight seeping through the french doors. You can “oooo” and “aaaah” now. I won’t stop you. 😉 Of course, we are effectively thumbing our noses at the dated countertops and nose-cabinets in the kitchen portion of the room. They continue to taunt me with their tacky ways and unflattering schnozzes, thus are destined for eventual renovation.

After moving in, we basically just plopped down some furniture that we already owned, which left it looking like this….

That huge red artwork is my favorite. My mother-in-law made it and gifted it to us when we moved in. I love the scale of it and the pop of color that it lends to the space. It’s pretty much the definition of awesome. The ceiling fan that we inherited in the nook was also pretty darn nice as far as ceiling fans go. Although, from the get-go, I’d planned to move it into one of the bedrooms to replace one of the other fugly ceiling fans that we also inherited. What I really wanted to do in this area was add a pendant light above the table.

My other dilemmas with the space included furniture + furniture arrangement. Though they aren’t terribly offensive in pics, I was never a fan of that table and chairs in the photo above (in this space anyways). The table was my previous craft table that I stripped and painted for our last house, and the chairs were craigslist finds that I refinished and recovered. They both looked great in our last house, but thrown together in this house, I wasn’t jumping for joy. First off, the space is a high traffic area. It leads to the laundry room, which leads to the back patio and our pool bath, the french doors lead out to the pool, and the garage door (not shown) which is our main mode of entry to the house is located on the other side of the red painting. So, a square table just wasn’t maximizing the flow of the space. The nook was screaming for a round table, preferably a round pedestal table.

I also didn’t like the off-centered arrangement that we had going in the photo above. It was weird. After we moved in, it took me a while to get a feel for the flow of the space, so I experimented quite a bit with furniture placement. And the arrangement above was one phase of said experiment. One aspect that really threw me was the location of the ceiling fan. It was slightly off-center and really close to the french doors, which meant that a table could never be oriented beneath it while still allowing outdoor access. So, functionally, the table was in an okay spot, but visually, it really bothered me to not have the table beneath the fan.

After several months of playing with the space, I finally decided that the table needed to be centered in the room and that there was adequate space to be able to do that. I found a round pedestal table on Craigslist, which I refinished (post coming soon… The table is now complete and curing in the garage looking all sexy and fresh). I can’t wait to (1) finally get it into the space and (2) show you guys.

But, in the meantime, we’ve (waitforit) installed a different lighting fixture. And I’ll tell ya… It’s new. And it’s specTACular.

Oh, yes.

See, my birthday was in April and although I said no gifts, Joey gave me the black metal hexagon lighting fixture from World Market…

I loved the shape and boldness of it, plus the price couldn’t be beat. I’d mentioned how much I liked it a while back and Joey remembered. Way to rack up the Husband-Points, Joe. 🙂 So anyways, after about a month of sitting in the box, we finally got it hung as shown by this lovely iPhone shot (it was only temporarily like this while we shopped for swag hooks)…

We left the chain long, because we wanted to swag the fixture to a better location to allow it to be centered over the table. We plan to eventually have an electrician come out to do a bunch of electrical work, including moving the junction box to a location above the pendant, but until then, swagging was a good, cheap, easy solution. I purchased this swag kit from Lowes for about $4, then spray painted one of the hooks oil rubbed bronze to match the fixture….

Since the fixture would be hung from drywall only, these were the components from the kit that I needed…

The kit also came with a wood screw for securing into beams. I began by screwing the anchor into the screw-thing (technical term escaping me at present, sorry)…

Then, I threaded on the hook…

I measured my location on the ceiling (centered in both the room and on the doorway to the laundry room) and used a 1/2 ” drill bit as suggested by the instructions on the package to drill a hole in my chosen location…

Next, I folded my anchor down and slid it into my hole…

Once it was through the drywall, I heard the spring mechanism engage indicating that the anchor had reopened. I tightened the hook by basically pulling down to apply some pressure to the anchor into the drywall and screwing it in place. Which left this…

I swagged the chain, leaving the fixture approximately 30″ above the table which is a standard height. Initially after swagging, the fixture looked like this…

It was okay, but I felt that the chain was too long and baggy, which resulted in a messier aesthetic than I was going for.

Cue the handy husband…

Joey removed some chain links using a pair of needle-nose pliers and fed the excess wire into the junction box, which left the swag much shorter and less obtrusive…

Neater too, right?? From the front you can barely even tell it’s swagged now…

And here’s the breakfast nook as it currently stands…

It’s amazing the difference a lighting fixture can make. I’m reminded of this every time I change one out, and yet I always put off doing it for whatever reason.

Photo bomb!

And with the light on…

I love the design that it casts on the ceiling. Snazzy. Plus, it draws the attention away from the plant I’m killing in the corner. Ha! Score.

So, next we’re finally moving the new table into the space and I’ll post about that once I get it photographed.

**Check out the following posts for how our breakfast nook looks now after refinishing a pedestal table and recovering the chairs/adding a few antique finds***

Tell me, does anybody else credit lighting fixtures with being life-changing? Just me? Shall I name it? I do that, ya know… If you’ve followed this blog for long enough, you’ve met Drex, Fri, Kivvy, plus more! Perhaps they need a new friend? 😉

I have to say that I’ll never look at Memorial Day the same after that day about a year and a half ago. That day that my only brother, Alex, lost his life serving in Afghanistan.

I will never look at it as simply a happy day to drink cocktails, grill out, and swim like I did before. A carefree day. A day off work. A holiday.

I mean, sure, don’t get me wrong… I’ll still do those things. I’ll be around family and friends and do my best to have a nice day. But now, Memorial Day has a whole new meaning to me. And it saddens me that I never really grasped it before.

From now on, I will do those things in memory of my brother. Because he died fighting to give us the luxury to be able to do that. I’ll do it as a toast to him. To thank him. To remember him. To cherish my family. To cherish my friends. And to never ever forget that these men and women devote their lives to allow us to continue ours in the fashion we see fit.

Here’s the post that I wrote about my brother initially. I wrote it as both therapy for myself and to put a face to a name. To put a story to a name. Because the more people who learn about him, the more he will be remembered. And that’s my goal. To help people who never met him to feel a bit more like they did. So, if you haven’t read it, I’d love it if you’d take the time.

If you’re looking for a charity to give to, consider donating to The Green Beret Foundation or Wounded Warrior Fund. Both are noble causes and were my brother’s preferred charities. I currently have a fundraiser going for the Wounded Warrior 5K which I’m running in honor of Alex, the link of which is here. We’ve already exceeded our goal thanks to the generosity of many, but I’d love to see how far we can go. Just to be clear, this post isn’t intended as a “fundraising post”. It’s for Memorial Day, so please don’t get the wrong impression or feel obligated. I just wanted to include these links in case anyone is interested.

So, please be safe today and don’t forget to remember our fallen heroes… The reason for this holiday to begin with.