Choosing Exterior Lights....OH the MaDnEsS!!!

Friday is here!! 

I'm smiling like a pardoned prisoner.

So, during this whole Farmhouse process, as you know, I haven't been exactly the quickest to make decisions on all the little details going into this project. My husband reminds me hourly...

 One of the decisions, however, was somewhat easier going that the others, and that was which exterior lights to choose for either side of the front doors and also either side of the garage doors.  I had done about 3 weeks of searching (yes, that's a small amount of time for my overthink-every-little-stinkin'-detail brain) when one day we were at Lowe's grabbing something boring and un-fun, like Pex or screws or something, so I decided to wander off like a child in a Lifetime movie...

....or a bored wife at Lowes...

...and I found myself in the lighting aisle.

 

That's when I spotted these lovely lights...

 

 

Image from Lowes.com.

 

Now, I know they're nothing fancy or unique per se, but I really liked the seeded glass and the scrolly hook at the top.  Plus they come in 3 different sizes...this particular one above is 20 inches tall.  I wanted to make sure that whichever lights I chose, especially for either side of our massive French doors, didn't look like tiny glow sticks from the road.  I've read that when purchasing carriage lights for your front porch that you should choose lights that are about 1 1/2  to 2 times the size you initially had in mind, because once you stand way back to look at them, they will look much smaller than you predicted.

 

...Then again, make sure you don't over do their size otherwise your guests will be wandering around your porch like zombies because they've been rendered incoherent and blind from the lights... 

 

 

I also really liked these lights from Lowes.  I had originally been looking for the classic, tall, rectangular shape like this guy below, and he also has the seeded glass, although its hard to tell from the picture.  The only downfall to these is that in the store, the glass looked kind of cloudy and dusty and not as crisp and clear as the picture you see here.  I was wondering if maybe the ones on display just hadn't been dusted in a while so, given my pain-in-the-ass inquisitive nature I decided to find an employee and ask...

 

....this was the look I got from the poor unsuspecting Lowes employee when I asked her if the lights were just dusty, or naturally cloudy like that...

 

 

 

...as much as I wanted to say, "ok, I take it that you don't have any freakin' idea, so please, don't hurt yourself..."  I just smiled and thanked her for attempting to have a clue, and I went on to find Nolan who I had lost somewhere between plumbing parts and the Walmart next door. 

 

...3 hours and one Missing Persons Report later, I found him, and we headed home.

 

Later that night I got online to further torture my myself and decided to turn to Houzz.com for some additional exterior light inspiration. After a couple hours, one bottle of wine, and a whole boatload of popcorn later, my fingers were so swollen from dehydration and massive sodium intake that I could no longer type, and I decided to call off the search for the night.  Luckily my last search had popped up a few lovely barn lights, and they peaked my interest.  Here's a few...


 

 

I like the copper accent on this one.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm a big fan of old school white enamel shades, so this one stood out too...but it's $440, sooo, unless I want to sell one of my kidneys on the black market, then I'd have to find a cheaper look-a-like...

 

 

 

This lovely, worn looking barn light is from Pottery Barn, so naturally I love it.  It is $189 though, which isn't near as bad as the white one above it, but we would need between 6 and 8 of them, so that can really add up....

 

SO, these are my top 5 lights or at least "looks" that I am going for.  If you have any opinions to help me make up my mind, I would really appreciate it....you all never let me down :)

 

 

 

It's funny, before we started building this house, anytime I needed to make a decision I was very resistant to outside opinions....

 

....I compare it trying to make a cat swallow a pill...me being the cat, and the outside opinion being the pill... You'd have to pin me down and stroke my neck just to get me to swallow the suggestion and then watch me carefully to make sure I didn't hack it back up...

 

But no, not now! I've opened my eyes and ears to the power of suggestion, and I embrace the help now wholeheartedly :) So thank you all for your help, without it I'd be wandering around our new front porch just shuffling my feet and making creepy, demented gurgling noises...much like the undead.

 

...in fact, I bet most zombies weren't led to their fate by an incurable deadly virus, oh no...they were merely undergoing new construction....

 

 

So, again, thank you for reading, and definitely thank you for helping keep me human.

 

:) ashley