you light up my life/security

Though I'm actually in the thick of upstairs studio room paint/reno madness mode, I took a break today. I've been staring at this staggeringly cheap 'n' ugly monstrosity of a light over my front porch for a year, so I finally decided enough was enough (there's a huge window next to my kitchen table that looks right at it). It's even worse than it appears, because the entire thing is plastic. You can even see where one of the "panes" is melted somehow. Yuck.

I replaced that hot mess with this swell Ikea "Fado", which previously lived over my kitchen table at my old apt. Though technically an indoor fixture, my entryway is a large-ish covered affair, so it's not likely to be damaged by weather. BTW, these minimalist globe fixtures are textbook Eichler-esque and I have no idea why Ikea stopped making them. You can still get similar ones from other makers but they're way more expensive (they still make the tabletop version- I have two of them in my bedroom). This fixture was designed to hang relatively low, so I did some minor modifications to put it closer to the ceiling- basically just removing a brushed metal tube that used to hang down, as well as pulling most of the previously exposed power cable up and shortening it.

And while the power was off, I figured I'd excise the equally hideous fixture inside the entryway. In a way, this one's even worse, because it was most likely installed right before I bought the place, meaning someone decided that this brand-new ugly crap was a good plan. Try not to look too hard at the ugly yanked-off wallpaper walls. Gotta prep and paint those.

Its replacement is this nifty three-CFL guy I picked up at Ikea. It appears that I need Wisk™ for ring-around-the-ceiling where the old one used to be- looks like I'll be painting the ceiling too. (I would've anyway... see that HVAC vent? Really bad things happen to the ceiling when you yank those out, and that painty-caulky mess is getting cleaned up and painted silver before I'm through.)

I also foolishly attempted to get the non-functioning doorbell working, to no avail. Turns out the wires to the actual bell part went into the coat closet and weren't attached to anything. They just sort of led to the vicinity of this:


Feast your eyes on this Hot Mess of Security! This hasn't even come close to functionality since I've been here- this is exactly how all the wires looked when I moved in. See all those screw terminals? Wires would be screwed to those if it worked. You can see that it dates back to 1996, and those wires are ALL over the house (I've been yanking them the whole time I've been here). I'm sure the original owners paid a pretty penny for this quagmire of wire. I added my own revisions:

... and relocated the whole mess to the garbage can. So if you know my address, feel free to come on down and bust into the joint. You can make off with my piano or fridge. Annoyingly, the one thing I couldn't locate was actual electricity, which would've likely helped my doorbell quest. There aren't any electrical outlets in there either. There's a light which doesn't work, and I can't find a switch for it either, but once I get that going, I presume I can tap 120v there and get the freaking doorbell going.