Lighting dramas

Well, we went to Beacon lighting on Monday (21st Sept) after work because we heard that they had a sale on and we were hoping to save money on the light fixtures we had chosen. When we got there we were told by the very sweet sales girl that the entire range of lights that we had chosen, the ones that we had based our entire colour scheme on, had been discontinued.

J and I were a bit stunned and unsure what to do. We wanted antique brass fittings, which is kind of a dull browny brushed brass look. There are a number of light fittings in this style but unfortunately most of them are designed for old colonial style homes and are therefore old fashioned looking. The lights that we had originally chosen were quite a modern style and they were a good price, about $15-$30 per fitting. The only other lights in the store that we remotely liked were $130 upwards per fitting. You can probably see our problem now......

We discussed our problem with Jaymee-Lee (the very sweet sales girl) who suggested that the best way would be to do the entire lighting selection again. Anyway, after a couple of hours and a couple of arguements (thankfully no tears) we had redone our lighting plan with quite a few modifications from the orginal plan. We have reduced the amount of ceiling fans (about $250 each) to save some money and cover the cost of the expensive brushed brass fittings. We have left bedrooms 2, 3 and 4 with a simple lightbulb in the ceiling (no fixture) as we couldn't find any we liked in the store. This means that we can do a DIY light fixture later - more things to do after handover!

Anyway, we received the quote back by the end of the week and thankfully we came in just under budget. I still preferred the old plan, but I reckon once the lights are in the ceiling we will never look at them again - except to clean them. Just a little hiccup on the road to building a house......