Across the construction worksite I could hear the story of Paul (from the Bible) playing on a CD telling about Saul’s blindness. That’s what the siding crew was listening to one day. This great crew was often heard asking questions about creation, politics, pondering on people from the Bible, and discussing morals. They were fun and polite and did everything we asked and more. This week they finished siding the house and made gutters on site.
It was this ProSiding crew that Jack turned to for help in helping him overcome his fear of heights. One of the (many) things that Jack has been dreading was hanging the 2 ceiling fans and the chandelier in the Great room, 34 feet up. Yes, this is my pilot husband, who has the fear of heights. So Monday, when the crew was nearly through with the siding and guttering Charlie’s siding crew agreed to put scaffolding in the great room to mount our ceiling fans and chandelier. Jack who has been wiring, wiring, and wiring built special wooden boxes to mount the ceiling fans and the chandelier on the timbers.
Ferguson Electric scrambled to get all of the parts we need it so this group could do the work while they were still on site. Kudos to Sarah Burns at Fergusons along with John, Deborah, Darryl and Tim. Their kindness and customer service are superb. However, we still were left with the wrong bulbs and fan blades and could not accomplish this awesome task on Wednesday. So, Thursday we skipped choir practice in favor of assembling our second choice of fans and trying the new bulbs. Nope- bulbs didn’t’ work. We drove off to Lowes in a huff (I might add!)
That brings me to the title of this blog. Have you shopped for lighting lately? For goodness sakes, since when did the alternatives in light bulb shopping become so complex? You can no longer purchase a 100-watt incandescent bulb. And energy saving policies require so much labeling in a different measurement scale…not watts and amps. Instead, there are so many new types of bulbs that it takes an Associate’s degree to understand the choices. For example, 13 lumens= 60 watts and 23 lumens = 100 watts. Kindly refer to this easy reference chart!
I needed 4 GU24 LED or CFL dimmable bulbs that to fit eache ceiling fan. Since the room is large, we wanted at least the strength of a 100-watt bulb. Each fan takes 2 bulbs. So how fast was the train traveling? Just kidding, keep reading!
The section in the home improvement store is huge now! Once I purchased these bulbs and got them home for the fan assembly, they were still wrong and late Thursday we had to make another Lowes run. Hopefully we have the correct ones for this work starts first thing Friday morning. Oops, this just in, Charlie says let’s wait until Monday. I agreed in favor of double checking those bulbs tomorrow.
So whether it is Saul or Paul, seeing the light, or my chandelier bringing a warm glow to Bedford Landings, I hope to sing the song soon…You Lumen up my Life! And you know, it may be the bulbs, it may be daylight or it may be heaven sent when this all comes together!