Kitchen Makeover – The Skylight Tragedy

It’s week 4 of the One Room Challenge and I am starting to feel the pressure! Did you see what we did in week 1, week 2, and week 3? Even though completing the kitchen island last week was a huge relief, this week was no walk in the park. The last major issue in the kitchen was the skylight.

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, please see my policies. 

The Kitchen Skylight

Most people add skylights to homes to bring more natural light in. But for some insane reason, a previous owner covered this skylight tunnel with cheap plexiglass and ugly decorative wood. And to top it off, they wired florescent light bars behind it all. What does that mean? Ugly + Ugly = Hideous!

This had to go! So this past week we fixed it. First, we started by removing the plexiglass that was hiding the skylight. See how much light this dingy plastic was blocking before?

I don’t even think dingy is a strong enough word here. Please, no one ever add something this ugly to your home. Ever.

Once the plexiglass came out, it was time to remove the decorative wood. You see those tacky florescent lights? There were four of them! Someone really wasted a lot of time on this. 

With a semi clean slate, it’s time to talk about those lights. Until now, I didn’t say much about them because you couldn’t really see them, but now that you can, you wish you hadn’t, haha! But obviously, I never had any intention of keeping them. They are flat out awful. So down they came and were promptly donated to the trash.

I was already enjoying this skylight more without all that junk blocking the light from shinning in. The problem is, those lights were the main light source in the room. Yes. You heard me right. The lighting situation in here was dreadful. Unnatural florescent lighting shining through old, yellowed plexiglass. Could it have been worse?! So clearly adding more lighting was a priority, but the position of the skylight made this challenging.

The center of the island is actually off center from the skylight tunnel. So I decided to add a faux wood beam across the skylight tunnel from which we could hang a real light fixture, centered with the island. But before we could start on the beam, we needed to do some repairs first. 

Once the skylight tunnel was patched and painted, we built a faux beam and hung it across the skylight tunnel.

Then we added this island pendant. If you remember back to the florescent lights, we already had a power source. We simply added a junction box to the inside of the faux beam and wired the light as you normally would. That’s all for this week! But I promise, the kitchen is looking SO much better 🙂 Stop by next Thursday to see the final stretch before the big reveal! And don’t forget to stop by Calling It Home to check out all of the One Room Challenge participants!

If you enjoyed today’s Kitchen Makeover – The Skylight Tragedy, please share it on Facebook or hover over an image and save to Pinterest! And if you don’t already follow me on Instagram, Pinterest, or Facebook, I would love for us to be friends!

Love new décor ideas and projects? Sign up for my newsletter so you never miss a post! Plus you will get exclusive access to my free printables available only to my awesome subscribers!

This post, Kitchen Makeover – The Skylight Tragedy, appeared first on Garrison Street Design Studio.