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Kitchen Makeover – The Skylight Tragedy

Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight TragedyIt’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.

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Garrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy

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!Garrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy

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?Garrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy

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

Garrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy

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. Garrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight TragedyGarrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy

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.Garrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy

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. Garrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy

Once the skylight tunnel was patched and painted, we built a faux beam and hung it across the skylight tunnel.Garrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy

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. Garrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy Garrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy Garrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy 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!

Garrison Street Design Studio - Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy

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Kitchen Makeover - The Skylight Tragedy

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18 Comments

    1. Yes Tim! It was so great to get rid of everything blocking the natural light and to be able to add a proper fixture 🙂

    1. Thank you Haley! I definitely struggled with what to do here. And can you believe that fixture is from Home Depot?! If only it included light bulbs 😉

    1. Thank you so much Rachel! It was a challenging obstacle, that’s for sure! My mom has been watching a lot of Fixer Upper, so I knew she would go for the beam 🙂

    1. Thank you Tracey! I am definitely eager to finish now. That was the last of our major changes. Now it’s time for the fun stuff 🙂

    1. Thank you so much Tina! I am so glad I was able to come up with a solution. And I was lucky to find the island pendant at Home Depot! 🙂

    1. You are so sweet! Thank you so much Jenny 🙂 It was definitely a challenge but I am pleased with how it turned out.

  1. I have a similar situation with my current home. We have a skylight directly over the island in the kitchen. We need updated lighting (right now there is a hideous rectangle box wooden light hanging on chains).

    Anyway, I was just wondering how is your light wired? You said that is a faux beam, but how is the light fixture connected to the power source?

    1. Since there was already florescent lighting in the skylight tunnel, we were able to re-rout it into the faux beam and add a junction box inside the beam. Then we just hung the fixture as you normally would. If you don’t already have electrical in your tunnel, you can probably tap into the electrical via the attic. Hope that makes sense 😉

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