First thing we did was take down the old fixture. That was easy enough... but we quickly discovered there was no junction box in the ceiling... and that the old light had been attached to this weird pipe thing... a weird pipe that must have been the old gas line... because our house is so old it probably had gas light fixtures... yikes.

Saturday night we spent an hour at Lowes trying to figure out some kind of solution to hang the new light fixture. In the end, we decided to cut the pipe so it was flush with the ceiling (it stuck out about 2"), and then just attach our new light bracket to the underside of the joist. We wanted to put in a new junction box, but with the knob and tube, there was no room and we didn't want to cut anymore holes in the ceiling. And yes, it's an abandoned gas line, don't worry.

It's probably not the best solution, but I think it's much better than tying to hang the light fixture off of the gas pipe, like it was before. I don't have anymore process pics because at this point because, well, you try to install a 3' diameter light 10' up in the air... with only one ladder. But here's the new light!
We love it! It looks like it just glows and lets off the most beautiful light into our room. It will take up to a 150-watt bulb, but since we have the other lights on the ceiling, we might just leave it like it is now. It's giant but I think that it works so well with the box beam ceiling and the rest of the room.

Now I think I want to get another one for the dining room. Would that be too much? It has the same light fixture that was in the living room... (sorry, this is an old picture, but as you see, the 2 rooms are connected)

In other news, we bought a dishwasher. Remember how ours was broken? We can't wash dishes any longer, we're so bad at actually washing them by hand and they just pile up. And yes, it's only been a week since we started using our kitchen and needing to do dishes. But it's been a long week. And now that we have a kitchen I want it to be fully functioning. And I am spoiled because I've always had a dishwasher, even in all the apartments I've rented. Anyway, I decided that buying appliances is no fun, I feel like we have to super research when spending so much money on something and it takes so much time to drive to every single appliance store (because of course, the price online is not the same price they'll tell you in the store...) In the end we ended up going with a KitchenAid, every KitchenAid had great reviews and we wanted something that we don't have to worry about once we have it installed. Our second choice was a great looking LG that had a lot more features, but I was worried that we'd have problems with it since they are still relatively new at making appliances, and the reviews weren't great. But here it is, we're picking it up on Thursday. We're thinking that if we can slowly replace the other appliances to be stainless, that will be one less thing we have to worry about when we do the big kitchen remodel.