You Light up my Life

In our living room we have two holes where there should be light fixtures. I have no idea why the previous owner took them down, but it has been on The List to get new light fixtures. This weekend, we finally went out looking and found a pendant for the front door, a nice track light for the other hole, and a chandelier to change out the ugly brass one in the kitchen. We tackled the first two this weekend.

Here's the hole above the door where we put the pendant.

Joseph screwed up the metal holder, and I shortened the chain.

The instructions to put the pendant together were pretty easy, and we managed this project in about 20 minutes. If I were to offer any advice, it is just to make sure you have all the little pieces strung up before you start screwing anything in. Otherwise, you may end up un-screwing some hard work. Luckily, there were no problems with this one.

I should have been suspicious. Nothing ever goes easy for us. Turns out light number two had a nasty little surprise for us.
Here's the second hole that needed a fixture. The fixture I found for this I fell in love with at first sight. Joseph had reservations about how he thought it would look, but because I loved it so much, he bought it for me.
Here's where we had our problem. The ceiling box hole was stripped; Joseph couldn't attach this metal plate, which is what would support the fixture.
I decided to take it down and see if we could replace it. Here's what it looks like; you can see the two holes where the screws were.
Here's the problem with my ceiling box. That metal piece up there where the box was screwed in is not a solid piece. It is separate from the bar up there. Which is fine for a new building; you can just hold it down and screw it in. But to do that, I would have to put a hole in my ceiling. Which left me searching for other options. We went to Lowe's and bought a new box for "existing" construction that was supposed to work, but it was too deep. It butted up against the metal bar up there and we couldn't get it in. We went to three different shops and they didn't have anything shallow enough.

One guy at Ace said, "Why didn't you just use a bigger screw?" Thanks Ace guy, great advice given too late. And to answer your question, I was afraid I would crack it. It is only plastic. Plus I had no idea that once I un-screwed it, it couldn't be put back up. Lesson learned.

Luckily, I thought up my own solution. I told Joseph we were going to bust it up.

Here's the new white box next to the old one. See how much longer it is?

And here's how we busted it...we took out the bottom strip to accommodate the metal bar in my ceiling.

We had to make our ceiling hole a little wider.

So here it is. A nice solution if I do say so myself. You can see the hole we made, so the bar wasn't a problem.

Joseph was able to put the metal plate back up and hook up the wiring.

Here's the mess on my floor.

Aaaand...my fabulous light! Love it.