Unfortunately, lengthening the wire basically means swapping out the wire. There's no safe or legal way around it. This also means we need a longer chain. Actually, you don't have to buy the chain to your full, desired length; you can just buy enough to cover the difference. But silly me didn't think of that so we bought a 5.5' chain instead of a 5' chain. Boo. I could've saved 50 cents! (Oops, did I just expose my inner cheapo? It's okay, it was only a matter of time.)
So after we got all our supplies, the first thing we did was prep the chandelier for spray painting. This just means covering all the wiring and parts you don't want to paint with some blue painter's tape (easier to remove than regular tape). We used cut up pieces of a grocery bag to cover the wires of the 6 bulbs and then taped it in place. And that's pretty much it!
And at the end, this is how our newly painted chandelier looks! We are really loving the oil rubbed bronze! So much nicer than Old-Rusty, wouldn't you agree?
So now we're all ready to swap out the old fixture with Bronze Beauty (oh, I kind of like how that sounds.) The bad news is this is the first time either of us has changed out a light fixture. But how hard can it be, right? (Obviously I'm still riding on the confidence from rewiring).
Thankfully David came home at this point and we had dinner first before we went on. (Having a full belly is essential to morale.)
We removed the cap off the old fixture and was relieved to see that it sort of has the same parts as BB. Huge mental relief. We took a picture at this point just for reference. (This is also when we shut off the power to this part of the kitchen to ensure we don't electrocute ourselves.)
Okay, no problem. We turned off the power switch again and removed the fixture from the ceiling. We laid the chain and wires on the ground, eyeballed how many chains we should remove to make it the shortest of the three and removed them. While we were at it, we also cut the black wire to make it the same length as the copper wire (I don't know why they were different in length in the first place). Then, we put it up again.
Hmm. Strange, now the light was hanging on the black wire! *Sigh. To make matters worse, we also sort of messed up when we rethreaded the wires through the chain.
Allow me to explain why this is such a big deal. The black and copper wires need to be buddies that are joined at the hip. Whichever loop in the chain the black wire goes through, the copper wire should go through the exact same loop in the exact same way. If not, you'll get tangled wires when rotating the fixture in place. You'll also get a lot of friction when sliding the chain along the wires.
Trust me on this one. We probably took down the fixture 4 or 5 times because of this mistake. My patience slipped rapidly after maybe the 3rd time we took down the fixture. I wanted to give up and call it a day. Thankfully, David remained a positive trooper and kept us going. (Thank you, honey). :) If I were to do this all over again, I would tape the copper wire to the black wire and thread both at the same time.
So back to our issue with the tension being on the black wire. We finally just removed enough links of the chain until the tension rests on the chain. I'm sure there's a more scientific way to do this, but we sort of went the trial and error route. (Not recommended, by the way. Those chain links are hard to pry open.)
Despite the setbacks, we amazed ourselves with this project. I mean, the light actually works! *A big pat on the back for the electrically challenged couple!* :)
I know, I know. It's too early to celebrate. We still have to hang the ceiling hook and swag it. By the time we got to this point, it was already 11:30 PM and it was past bedtime for us so we called it a night.