it'll be a breeze: part 1

It seems like every time I think something will come together quickly and easily in my house, we run into roadblocks that add hours (or even days!) to our renovation plans. Welcome to the joys of older-home ownership. Although it's not fair to blame all my house problems on it being over 20 years old, really the problem is just in the quality of how some of the initial building was done...
But anyway, today is not a lecture on "if you're going to do a job, do it right". Today is all about the evolution of my kitchen ceiling, and it has been a beautiful transformation so far.
We started out with a standard, fluorescent light box inset into out kitchen ceiling. This was not one of the newer, nicer looking florescent lights, like this or this. As you can see it was the super classy, huge, square lights with the pretty plastic covers over them (I didn't get a picture before the covers came off and the holes for the recessed lights were cut); and I wanted it GONE. I also really wanted a fan in the kitchen because it gets pretty warm in there. I know a ceiling fan in a kitchen might not be everyone's cuppa tea and lots of people take them out of houses they move into, but I also knew there was potential for awesomeness and a whole new level of cool comfort in there on bread baking days. My husband was not convinced at first, but much like my son's pallet wall and our navy accent wall, he decided to trust me and just go with it. Now he likes it and thinks it was a good idea. Score another one for the wifey!
We had a licensed, general contractor retrofit the old light box so we could install a 30" ceiling fan (this one from Home Depot) and do all the electrical for the four recessed lights we were adding. As soon as he had the old light out I knew this was going to make a huge impact in the kitchen. We have standard 8 foot ceilings (blah) and it's amazing how much "raising" the ceiling in that one spot opened the kitchen up and made the ceiling in general seem so much higher! 
The last couple of things I have to do before we can proclaim the kitchen ceiling "done" is replace the pre-existing recessed light above the sink with a pendent light and finish painting the ceiling with a fresh, white coat of paint. I just have to decide for sure which pendent light I want... :)
Linked to: Skip to my Lou, 

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