Boob Light Enhancement + An Update

Yep, that's right folks...the title of this post is all about boob lighting.  If you don't know what I'm talking about then perhaps a picture will help.

That there is what many these days are now calling boob lights.  Most of us probably have them somewhere in our home.  We certainly do.  In fact, all of the houses I've ever lived in have some form of boob lighting hanging from the ceiling.

In recent years, there has been increasing design chatter about ways to transform these lights into something with a bit more, ehhhh, design.  I happen to think these lights serve a perfectly good purpose just as they are.  For example, if you have super outdated light fixtures and are looking to make a quick, effective change throughout your house, then these boob lights offer a quick update for relatively little cost.  We did this in our previous house and it made a huge difference in providing cohesive lighting throughout for very little time or money.  BUT, there sometimes comes a point for most of us when we may want something a bit more customized for our spaces.  That's where people get creative and start finding all kinds of ways to revamp boob lights.

One of the rooms I've been slowly working on for almost a year now (ugh, I can't believe it has taken me sooo long) is Miss Emme's big girl room.  I officially started working on it last July and came up with this rough plan.

I've managed to knock out a few of the projects I initially had planned and a few others have taken me for-eva to complete or have been scrapped all together.  Here's a quick list of all the projects I've been working on in Emme's room, along with a quick update on one of the final lighting solutions.  We'll call it a boob light enhancement project, but I'll get to that in just a second...

Here's the recap and links to what has been accomplished...along with a few new pictures!  

• Dresser:  I ended up purchasing an antique buffet and I started refinishing it right before we found out I was pregnant with Will.  It's sitting in her room now and it's almost done...  I'll finish it someday.  
• Wall Hooks:  I haven't purchased anything for this yet, but love this idea I ran across today!
• Chair:  I ended up putting an old school desk (literally!) my mom had in the little play nook.  Emme LOVES it.
• Paint:  All of the walls are 100% painted and I even did a chevron wall in the little play area.  
• Artwork:  I did a custom "you are my happy" canvas and made printable alphabet art.
• Fabric:  I used the daisy fabric you see above to create curtains for the windows.  
• Lighting:  I grabbed an old chandelier from Habitat for Humanity and painted it red for the play area.  The other light in the room was a boob light that had been nagging me for some special treatment for months.  I finally got around to that last week and I'll give you the tutorial below.

And here's a picture of the room before with the beautiful boob light!

Once I had the curtains up and the new red chandelier in place, it became more apparent than ever that I needed to do something to tie the two different ceiling light sources together...that brassy boob light and the snazzy red chandelier just weren't ever going to be BFFs.

Excuse the crappy lighting in this photo!

I came up with lots of ideas, but in the end decided that I wanted to go the easy route of just taking off the glass shade around the boob light and adding a lamp shade instead.  This is a fairly common solution these days, so there's nothing special about this idea.  I basically just purchased a lamp shade and used this tutorial to recover it as necessary and then I added red and white polka dot ribbon trim around the top and bottom edges.  I also took down the boob light base and spray painted it a glossy white to hide the brass.  Super easy and for less than $15 total!

Here are the materials I used for the light cover.

Updated boob light fixture!  It's too bright in the play area to see
how nicely it ties in with the chandelier, but it does!!  Trust me.  :)

So, that's my long winded way of updating everyone on the progress I've made in The Babe's room and just another task I can cross off my pre-Will delivery date to do list.  Wow, that's a mouthful!