I Love Lamp

Remember when I mentioned a while back that we have an ugly entry way light above our foyer, but we have to use it because we need more light in our living room?

No? Well, to refresh your memory, this is the ugly entry way light that we've been keeping on, because it shines into the living room, where we've got some lighting issues.

I won't bore you again with all the details of how difficult it was to come up with a furniture configuration in our living room, but basically, the cheap-o Ikea floor lamps (you know the ones, white plastic scoop top with silver base) were too big to place next to our former-entertainment-center-turned-corner-shelf-units, which was the only good place to put lights at that end of the room. So I stole our nicer and smaller blue ceramic shade Ikea lights from our bedroom.

I actually rather like the lights here, it's a little more interesting than just sticking lamps in the corners of the room (not that that was an option here), and they fit the blue and green color scheme. But man, how badly do I want to paint our walls a bright sage green, so there would be more contrast between our furniture and the walls!

Actually, while we're looking at this above picture, I'll call out a few things. Obvs the newspaper squares are just placeholders for future pictures. And I'm planning to paint the trim and top of my gecko aquarium white, so it will be a little less in-your-face, even though it's kinda in-your-face already, being in the living room. What can I say, I love my pets! Oh, also, I'm still trying to decide if I want to put the glass doors on the corner shelving units. I feel like when they were part of the entertainment center it gave off a really polished look (and with the frosted edges on the glass doors, it matches our glass top coffee table). But now that they're in the corners, I don't want the shelves to start looking like china cabinets, which I fear adding the glass doors might do. But without the glass doors, I think I need bigger decorative pieces on the shelves than I've got now. Yes, big problems I've got, haha!

So anyways, back to lamps. Lamps at the other side of the room , that is, now that we've covered this side of the room.

As I mentioned, everything was super dim on the other side of the living room, unless we had the ugly foyer light on. So on our trip to IKEA a few weeks back, I picked up a $20 lamp shade and a $3.99 lamp cord kit, and finally got around to putting it up!

And I'm a bad little blogger because I didn't take "before lamp" photos. But I'll simulate them with the lamp turned off, so you can see just how dim it was on the other side of our living room, with no new lamp, and with the ugly foyer light turned off.

(Gotta love the messy coffee table with glasses, chapstick, catnip, computer and other randomness. Sorry, cleaning for you guys would be way too much work!)

(See why I said I wanted to make new slipcovers? Store bought ones just always look sloppy since they're one size fits all)

And now, with the lamp on, it's so much brighter!

Hooray lamp! I really love the look of the lamp shade too (and the $20 price tag!). It's a subtle, neutral color, so doesn't draw too much unneeded attention to that corner (since really, a floor lamp would have been better, but there's no room for one behind the chairs, and I didn't have a 3rd matching blue lamp anyway).

Here's a closer look at the lamp:

Now, it can be a little awkward to have a wire coming down the wall when doing a hanging lamp, since we can't exactly drill into the ceiling in a rental. But I found a good way to at least attach the cord as close and straight as possible in the corner, with Command non-permanent hooks from the hardware store. I used the ones meant for Christmas lights, although apparently they make ones for bigger cords too, although I haven't found those in stores yet.

I just stuck the little hooks to the wall as far in the corner as possible, all the way down to the ground, let it sit for the recommended hour, then attached my lamp's cord to the hooks with small pieces of white twist ties.

This also worked great to transition the cord from the ceiling, over our crown moulding, to the wall.

Being in our living room with actually enough light at that end of the room makes me so happy! I really DO love lamp (I hope y'all get that movie reference)! And good riddence to the need for the ugly foyer light. Except when we're waiting for the pizza delivery guy, that is!

Is anyone else obsessed with brightly lit rooms? And how cool are those non-permanent wall hooks, have you tried those out yet? I'm planning on getting a bunch more for hanging pictures!