Stainless steel pendants have officially replaced the old heavy stone pendants. Hooray for no more knock outs with 5lb. light covers! The house happened to come complete with these lovely stone like pendants over the kitchen prep area. I didn’t want to take them out completely because I liked the extra lights, but one of the first things we did was remove the stone covers. They hung down just low enough to hit me in the head every time I went to use that counter, and no I’m not THAT tall. The fact that they weighed 5lbs. each just made it that much worse. No covers = bare bulbs. Bare bulbs that are still too long = hot bare bulbs right at forehead height, also not good. Until we had the time to shorten the wires, these fixtures were either just down all together, or somehow tied up to allow us to use the lights without burning our foreheads. Here’s the before:
Once the cords were shortened to the right height, we had bare bulb lights. Not the worst thing, but after a good year (or more) of looking at them, it was definitely time to get them finished. I had been putting off the trip to the very UN-organized garage to dig for the stainless steel pendants, but I just couldn’t stand that everything else in the kitchen was finished except for these. Once I found them, it was an easy install. The overall height is much better now – long enough to provide light to the counter below, but I haven’t had to worry about hitting my head since. Yes, the light bulbs look a little funny in the after photo, I know. These are the old bulbs from the really long pendants and I need to replace them with shorter ones that don’t stick out…it’s on the to do list, near the bottom.
Much better right? I originally made these stainless steel pendants for the last place we lived. If you want to see how they were made, you can see it here complete with photos of our old fireplace mantle and the plants I used to love, back when I had time for plants.