Although we love many things about our condo here in SW Florida, (from the size to the awesome location to the pool which we have to ourselves almost all year long), one thing we don’t always appreciate is a lack of natural light. It’s a first floor unit with only a limited number of windows, which means we don’t get as much light as we might if we were upstairs or on a different side of the building.
Most of the time, that doesn’t bother us all that much because we have a great view of the nature preserve behind us…and the covered patio is always in the shade which is especially nice in the winter.
To brighten up our living spaces (and save energy while reducing the amount of heat the bulbs are throwing off), we’ve been switching out lights to new LED lamps (such as in our bathrooms and closets) so that we don’t have to get dressed in the dark (and people in the real world seem to appreciate that 🙂 ).
But as foodies who love to cook (and take photos to share with all of you), dark is not such a great thing to have in the kitchen — especially when you want to keep all of your fingers.
(Please ignore the bit of chaos that was going on in the kitchen in these photos. That area of our home is still very much a work in progress! I can’t wait to have single toned cabinets one day soon!)
Recently, we made an “innocent” trip to the home improvement store (really, when are those innocent?!) to buy a couple of nails and discovered some nice daylight-colored LED bulbs in the clearance bin. As fate would have it, they had exactly the number we needed…so home they came with us!
It was an easy replacement because the LED bulbs are built just like regular flood lights — but heavier! So you unscrew one and screw in the new one after. No different than replacing a regular bulb and we may never have to replace them again since LEDs have such a long lifespan.
The Outcome of New Lights in the Kitchen
The difference is very noticeable. I really like the fact that the natural daylight color comes through at all times of the day now, whether it’s 6am or midnight. It’s perfect for food photography but also practical to see what you’re doing in the kitchen.
Can you see the brightness of them and the diminished yellow tint? I think it’s especially noticeable in the cabinet coloring.
One other smart addition we made that day was a dimmer switch for the lights. These new LED lights are very bright — and sometimes it’s fantastic to have a glowingly bright kitchen. But other times, it’s nice to add a little mood lighting and tone things down a bit.
The dimmer switch was quite easy to install and absolutely worth the $30 price tag…but if you have multiple switches that control one light — make sure to find the switch combo pack that allows you to control the light from both sides of the room.
Not Just LED Flood Lights
While we were hunting for bargains, we also found a great looking hanging light fixture. It’s a nice way to make a room transition and we placed the fixture right above our bar area in the kitchen.
We love the way it came together with the rectangular glass light covers…and the fact that we paid only $10 for the hanging element instead of the list price of $50!!
It basically meant we got the square pendant lights for free because the fixture was so cheap. And we only had to wait a few minutes for the extremely friendly and competent Lowe’s employee unmounted it for us.
The ultimate goal will probably be to split off the hanging lamps from the main recessed LED lights with separate switches. But until we get an electrician out here, this arrangement has been doing just awesome!
What do you think? We’re working through the condo in a hodge podge way at this point, but we definitely still have a lot of great ideas in store. And the best part is that all of these costs are inexpensive and easy fixes. Our ultimate goal is to renovate our entire home (around 1900 square feet) with paint, new wood floors in the bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen upgrade and more…for less than $10,000 and a bunch of sweat equity.
Think we can do it?
I think we can! So stay tuned for more antics to come!!
Are you working on any projects around your home to start off the New Year?
