Project Kitchen Gorgeous - Chapter 2…Lighting Gate

Hello lovelies.

It’s Monday and you know what that means….kitchen time.

Let’s pick up where we left off shall we.

…….

Blogger/client and designer set up a meeting to review plans.

Blogger walked into office in the middle of design mecca/ nirvana and noticed instantly brass regency chairs around marble table with lush Persian rug resting gorgeously on the floor.

Further proof that this was a match made in design heaven.

Happy.

Blogger sat at aforementioned table to browse through initial design plans and almost started weeping with joy when she saw…snakeskin, blush leather, marble and crystal.

Not that she needed any further proof but there it was.

4 hours passed in a blink of an eye.

Blogger had to be pushed out the door and couldn’t take a hint because she basically wanted to move in and never leave.

You couldn’t really blame her…just the fabric collection alone required a few days to peruse adequately.

In any event, blogger finally took said cues and made the drive home and excitedly showed her other half the plans.

Everyone was happy.

She went to sleep that night content that all was right with the world.

Blogger had a restful mind, a calm spirt, a knowledge that the kitchen was going to be that which she thought only possible in dreams.

And then….the next day hit and this officially began….duh duh duh….

Blogger’s mind started reeling with all the possibilities.

She immediately began thinking of every light humanly possible.

Designer told her to compile some inspiration shots so she did.

Here’s what that looked like.

The fashion photo encompassed the colour and feel blogger was going for…in a nutshell….gold, crystal and pink.

Blogger also hit the online waves for pretty lights in action.

She found these and thought they each had that little something special she was looking for.

It was that illusive je ne sais quoi she was looking for.

Lights that told the mood of the space.

Lights that spoke loudly on their own, but didnt’ feel forced.

Lights that sung.

Lights that made the whole room sparkle.

Lights that no one else had….or at least not many people.

So…time for more inspiration.

Blogger hit the usual haunts…1st Dibs for the grande but unattainable, eBay for the 1st Dibs lookalikes, Craigslist for the eBay lookalikes and Etsy for something totally wakadoodle but still chic.

She compiled a visual list of…

and…



And then sent all of the above to designer.

About an hour passed and blogger continued the search.

After talking with designer, she began operating on the assumption that 3 lights would have to be purchased so that there would two over the table and one over the island or vica versa.

So…many, many searches commenced with the inspirations, and budget in mind.

It’s that latter little stickler that really started getting in her way.

More about that later.

After a few hundred emails back and forth about the look/feel that she was going for, blogger and designer agreed on a general idea and the hunt became a little more refined…a little.

Blogger still had a HUGE variety of things she liked and found narrowing it down difficult.

And then one day, while looking at one of her favourite vintage haunts, she discovered a light fixture that forced her to recognize that she had…

with a vintage pink Murano goddess of a light.

Emails were instantly exchanged and designer set off to attempt a little dealio with the seller.

Hoping for the best, blogger attempted to stop her growing light fixture obsession at least long enough to see if this beauty might actually be in the cards.

But then, it wasn’t.

Like so many lights that would follow, it was just too DAMN expensive.

Fooooock!!!!

So, the search resumed.

Unfazed, designer started to send blogger some DIY ideas and vintage possibilities.

Blogger started to do the same.

A few weeks/5000 emails were exchanged and then it was meeting time/shopping time.

Blogger and designer ventured out together to view marble selections.

On the way home, designer took blogger to one of her favourite antique shops to see a little crystal beauty she had spotted in the window.

Blogger looked up, saw the sparkly vintage beauty and was indeed smitten.

She was told that another person had actually just left to get cash in order to purchase, so she quickly whipped out her trusty MasterCard and wabam, a…..

was made.

Fabulous, happy, great, love it, lighting is done…only, it wasn’t.

It seemed as though this purchase only enhanced blogger’s crazy infatuation and put the wheels of even more pondering in motion.

Questions started:

1. Should this one go by itself over the island and then a new pair of something compatible but totally different over the table?

2. Should this go over the table with one like but not exact fixture over the island?

Designer told blogger not to worry- all would work out.

Blogger didn’t listen.

Later that night, she started up the mad search again and found plenty of pretties.

Blogger began compiling an actual list of real possibilities that were kind of, almost within budget…but not really.

In rapid succession she began sending them to designer.

Designer started a similar arsenal.

The collection looked something like this…there were doubles…

and singles….

but not of them were quite right.

Mostly because all of them were too foofing expensive.

Some were actually in budget but those ones just weren’t perfect.

So…the search continued.

Designer and blogger finally settled on the copper ball numbers that are in a couple of the shots- you know the ones….Tom Dixon delights.

That was until March the 6th happened…a day cemented in the annuls of Lighting Gate history.

Blogger was with her family just casually browsing the best the city had to offer in antique awesomesauce when she wandered half-hazardly into a little tiny trinket of a shop.

With literally a rabbit hole pathway, blogger’s eyes started to dance around the 8000 or so fixtures above.

she looked a little to the left, and found the equivalent of lighting utopia in the form of vintage 80s blushy pink brass….

Only problem was, there was only one and she needed two.

Drat X a million.

But then, the sweetest little man of an owner said that two was entirely possible.

He’d simply take a larger one apart, find new frames and reconstruct two identical fixtures.

Blogger literally lost her mind….right there on the spot.

She yanked out her iPhone and typed the fasted text message of her life, attached an orange lit terrible picture of this light fantastica and hit send hoping above hopes that designer would love it as much as she did.

Designer was at first, a little curious about the particular shade/apparent orange but upon blogger’s repeated insistence that it was actually a perfect pink, agreed that they appeared sublime.

Blogger and designer agreed to view it together in person and the rest as they say is history.

Blogger now owned two of the most perfect light fixtures ever produced…in her humble opinion.

And they were in budget- god bless ’em.

So after months of endless searching, blogger was definitely rewarded and had a trio of lighting pretties that were most certainly…

…….

So there you have it…the whole Lighting Gate story.

A little sorted but the best kind of tale…one with a happy ending.

Make sure you hop over to Sashay to hear Meredith’s take on lighting at chez Bijou.

Happy days…you get a double whammy of kitchen garb today;)

xo