Kitchen Lighting Updates

Hey y'all! I'm headed to the Luke Bryan concert tonight and am sooo excited! But right now it's time to share a few updates we've done to the kitchen in the form of lighting. Sidenote - I've made some updates here on the blog, too, including a new header that I think is much simpler and cleaner! And I've added a House Tour button on the sidebar, so you can take a peek inside all the rooms in our house! (Well, the ones that we've actually started working on..)

Back to kitchen lighting, though. Since before I moved in, we had a ceiling fan in the kitchen that was....well, not suited for our kitchen. Why? Well for one: 1) It hung down too low. It felt invasive in our tiny kitchen that has fairly low ceilings. And 2) It just didn't match our decor or style - it was too dark and traditional for our newly bright and sunny kitchen. I don't have a proper picture of this fan, but you can kind of see it in this photo (Try not to be blinded by the bright lightbulbs):

I think that's all you need to see of it to tell that it just didn't work in the space. Too large, too dark, and too low. It had thick, wooden blades with leaf carvings. Just too elaborate for us. I would've loved to switch this out with some kind of pendant and shade combination...however, we don't have air conditioning in our house. And it gets pretty hot in here in the summer. So a ceiling fan is pretty much a requirement.

So we decided to go with something much more flush to the ceiling, modern, and smaller. What did we get? The same fan we got for the living room. A Turn of the Century fan called Apollo. See it here. We call the living room fan Apollo and the kitchen fan Apollo 2. Hehe. Nothing like a NASA joke to spice up your Saturday afternoon. ;)

Anyway, we love this fan because it's so flush, it looks modern, and it has simple, clean lines with a sleek silver color. It also comes with a dimmer and remote which we use often. Here's what it looks like in our living room (You can see we added a trim piece around it to finish it off - will look awesome with the crown molding we plan on getting eventually!):

And now...here's how his twin Apollo 2 looks in the kitchen:

It's sooo much better in the space than the old one. It sits higher and flush to the ceiling, and the bulbs aren't blinding us at our eye level. And even though the old fan wasn't suited for our house, we knew it could be a great addition in the right space. So we gave it to Trent's sister for an additional Christmas present, because we knew she loved it and it would look so much better in her house with the higher ceilings. So the old fan lives on!

We've also made a second lighting update to the kitchen, and that is the light above the sink. There was a fluorescent tube light there before, and it was quite hideous. Even though it was hidden from a distance, once you got closer you could see the fluorescent wonder in all its glory. And fluorescent lighting in the kitchen isn't very cozy. So in that guys' place, Trent put in a small, simple pendant light from IKEA. Now it looks and feels a little more modern:

And surprise - you can't even tell, but the light is just a plug-in, and the cords are hidden behind the decorative wood:

There was never actual wiring for a light, just a plug-in, and what was there before.....let's just say it wasn't up to code! Yikes! All better now :)