Let there be light

A few days after I moved in, one of the lights in the kitchen flickered and died. That's pretty much par for the course for me: the first week I lived in my old place, I had to replace the outer of the ring lights on the kitchen overhead fixture (note that was the only time in twenty years I had to touch that fixture - yeah for fluorescent lights!).

The lights in the little galley kitchen here are behind a dropped ceiling. There's an aluminum frame that supports frosted, waffle-weave plastic panels that hide four fluorescent tubes. The lighting (when it's all working) is actually nice to work in - bright but shadowless, making it easy to see what you are doing (a plus when wanting to chop vegetables, not fingers).

I know there are four tubes because I finally climbed up to get a model number in order to get a replacement. In a flash of brilliance (heh, pun intended) I grabbed my phone and took a picture of the info on the end of the tube. Well, it may have worked better if I could have read any of the four pictures I took. (you try taking a clear picture while standing on the top step of a stepstool and holding the camera over your head). But close enough.

Note for future remodeling: take out the drop ceiling and figure out a different type of lighting. The wall comes down almost eight inches to meet the top front of the cabinets (there may be duct work behind that portion of the wall, explaining why the cabinets don't go all the way up), which is the level of the current drop ceiling.  Between being up one step from the living room and the drop ceiling, the kitchen is short about fourteen inches in floor to ceiling height.

Not that it makes a difference to the current owner, who tops out at 5 feet and not-quite-four inches tall.

A friend's kitchen has some lovely cabinets - carved crown molding, the door insets glass on some cabinets and mesh on others...I want them. Sigh. Given the dimensions of my kitchen, I'm willing to bet that when I do finally remodel, I'll need custom cabinets. The good news is that the kitchen is tiny and I won't need many.