The Most Horrific Thing Happened to Me

Honestly, read at your own risk. You might have nightmares.

I am not well today. I AM NOT WELL. Because a horrific thing happened to me on Sunday and I need to tell you about it.

I moved into a 100-year-old Craftsman house in April. It’s a great place with tons of charm and it’s in the best neighborhood — but it needs a lot of work. I’m a renter, not an owner, but after living in Brooklyn for so many years, I got used to fixing stuff myself so I’ve been putting a lot of elbow grease into the place. I’ve painted, bought new window treatments, swapped out painted-over hinges for new ones and more.

My rule is this: If I’m changing something that I will leave when I move out, it needs to be inexpensive. For example, as much as I wanted antique brass hinges from Rejuvenation at $43 a pop, I settled for $11 steel ones from Amazon that look like antique brass. (Also, just so you don’t think I’m tossing out vintage hardware that just needs a cleaning, I removed the old paint from a couple of the hinges and discovered they weren’t real brass either.)

Anyway. My next project is light fixtures. I got a pretty chandelier for the dining room that I will take with me when I move out. But for the kitchen and bathroom, I decided to go with something cheaper because I’m going to leave them when I move. For reference, these are the current light fixtures in those rooms. (I need three total plus a coordinating vanity light above the bathroom mirror.) They’re old and rusty and need to be replaced.

The kitchen before I painted and a close-up of one of the light fixtures

In a perfect world where money is no object, I would get schoolhouse lights like these from Rejuvenation, but they’re $250-300 a pop and aren’t in my budget. (I want milk glass and chrome and can’t find dupes on Amazon that I like.)

So, going in another direction, I decided to get an Ikea Sunneby cord and a Tradfri globe bulb for now, and then I can add a milk glass shade later if I decide I don’t like the bulb alone.

Is it what I wanted? No. But is it within my budget? Yes. And will it look a thousand times better than the current light fixtures? Also yes. The total price for the cord and bulb is $35 ($75 total with the milk glass shade), so it’s priced right.

Yesterday I went to Ikea and got the cords and bulbs. When I got home, I contemplated how to hang them. For the dining room light fixture, I hired someone from Task Rabbit to do it because a ceiling fan needed to come down and the fixture was pretty big.

Ugly ceiling fan on move-in day and after I painted and swapped it out!

But with these simple cords, I decided to try to do it myself. I know I shouldn’t play with electricity, but swapping out a light fixture is apparently really easy to do. Also, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but I can do anything. So I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, turned off the electricity and got to work. Little did I know what awaited me.