Hello everyone!  What a crazy weekend we had around here!  The good news is that the remodel is getting closer and closer to completion, and I couldn’t be more pleased with how it is looking!

My Brother-in-law and his family came out for several days to help us out and we couldn’t be more appreciative.  It has become much more work than we initially anticipated and it would have taken three times as long without his help.

The next step will be the entry tile, hardwood for the stairs, bathroom tile, followed by new carpet.  We’re getting there!  In the meantime we’ve been working on some outdoor spruce-ups with this beautiful weather we’ve been having lately.

One of the first things we noticed when we were purchasing our house was this:

It just goes to show how important curb appeal is, because it really bothered both my husband and I.  Before the house was even ours we set to work trying to find the manufacturer of the lights and get a new globe and bottom piece ordered, but no luck.  The house is about 10 years old and the maker of the lights is long gone. So we had two of these with the middle one broken.

I didn’t love those lights, but would have been happy just replacing that middle one.  The globes were a little oxidized, but nothing I couldn’t have cleaned up.  After finding out that we wouldn’t be able to find a replacement we resigned to the fact that all three would have to be replaced as well as the matching lamp on the column in the yard.

We really didn’t want to spend much, so I was thrilled when we found some discontinued lights at home depot for %75 off!  They started out around $70.00 and were on clearance for $17.00.  SCORE!!!  We picked up three and a yard light for under $80.00 (although we had to go to three different Home Depots to round them all up).

My awesome Hubs installed them a couple of weekends ago and it was such an easy process.  I probably could have easily done them myself, but he’s just awesome like that.

There are only two wires to hook up and it’s super easy.  He had all three done in less than an hour.

I just love how they turned out!

At this point it was starting to get dark, so these pictures are a little difficult to see.

That one is the column in the front yard.  Here’s a look at all three.

It’s hard to tell in the pictures, but it really makes a difference.  I love outdoor lights.  We have lights around the pond as well as lights pointed at the house.  Someday, when I figure out how to take better pictures at night, I’ll post about up lighting.

Do you need to spruce-up your outdoor fixtures?  There are other options other than buying new also.  If that globe hadn’t been broken I would have soaked the glass in something that would have removed the mineral deposits and given the rest of the fixture a fresh coat of oil rubbed bronze spray paint.  If you have outdated brass, don’t be scared to spray paint them!  Have a great week and thanks for coming by!