When we moved into our house, I knew that eventually I’d replace the too-modern-for-my-taste pendant lights over the kitchen island–and probably at some point, the cabinet pulls, too. The pulls are growing on me, but last week I replaced the pendant lights since the ones I’d been eyeing at Birch Lane were on sale for the Fourth of July.
Here’s the before:
They were fine, just not my style as I’m pretty traditional in my aesthetic. And I prefer gold finishes to chrome.
Years ago I learned how to hang and rewire light fixtures and I’ve saved so much money over the years with that skill. It only took me about an hour to remove the old ones and hang the new ones, and it made such a difference:
We also bought new counter stools. As a military family, for years we’ve had two stools that are counter height and two that are bar height because we never knew which ones we’d need for any given house. Finally I’m in a position that I know that I need counter stools (the bar height ones are on Facebook Marketplace) and that I need four of them. I’ve loved the Serena and Lily bistro style stools for years–they remind me of every outdoor cafe in Europe–and so I ordered them during the Fourth of July sale, too.
We had a little hiccup with the delivery…the Fedex driver elected to drop them at the top of our driveway, not on our covered front porch and not even under the roof overhang of the garage. We had to pay $120 for shipping so I was expecting a phone call and maybe even bringing them into our home, but no. We arrived home in the evening after a late afternoon thunderstorm had popped up and found this:
See the wetness at the bottom of the boxes? And that marking on every box that says, “keep dry”? Yeah.
This was how the top of every box looked:
I was pretty upset…even on sale, four of those stools are over $1200 and then of course I paid extra for shipping. I don’t think our FedEx driver takes much pride in his/her work, unfortunately.
The good news is that I wrote Serena and Lily and sent these pictures and they gave me several ways to fix the problem. I was ultimately pleased with their customer service and the quality of the stools is excellent.
We intend to buy two of the matching dining chairs in another month or so; my only concern is how do I request a different FedEx person?!
In other news, I’ve started back to work as a hospice nurse case manager, and while I’m only going to work part-time, I’m orienting full time so I can get up to speed quickly. So that’s one of the reasons I’m hitting publish on this post a day late.
Thanks for stopping by!
