Let there be light!

After my fan and dresser projects, I was feeling positively giddy about spray paint. To the point of looking around to see if there are other projects that I could "fix" for a mere $2.97.

Enter builder-grade fixtures:

Blearch! We're talking builder grade from the nineties, folks. Since the house was built in the 60s, this was an upgrade. Not only are they cheap-o [12.88 @ Lowe's], they're brassy. And they only hold one bulb each. Grr. Their only redeeming quality is that the knob that holds it all together isn't flush. So it's a fairly straightforward  task to change out bulbs.

After a few coats of Krylon's ORB:

But I can still see the brassyness. Especially when the light is on. I am on a mission to get rid of brass in the house. My solution? Frosted glass spray paint.

Here's the same treatment using Rustoleum's Semigloss White on recessed lighting in the den:

If you look really closely, you can see it's not an absolutely flat surface; when this room had be painted previously, they didn't bother to tape OR wipe off any extra smears of paint. Classy!

Project breakdown:

cost:
frosted glass spray paint: ~$4.50
ORB: free [left over from den & dresser projects]

time: start-to-finish, 24hrs; hands-on, < 1hr

Note1: if you are looking for a factory finish, this process will not do the trick. However, if you are just trying to get 95% of the way there, it does the job. I figure my house will never be considered "new", but  I'd prefer the perception be "slightly used" instead of "needs to be gutted".

Note2: the frosted spray paint is a lot more fumey than regular spray paint. I was in the garage (with the door open) and periodically would go back into the house to escape fumes.

Note3: If you are just trying to swap out one old builder-grade fixture, I'd say you're better off just buying one. The time savings is totally worth the $5-6 extra bucks of savings. However, I have four (4) of these puppies, and it took only 1 can of each paint type to transform all of them, so for me  it was < $10 vs. ~$50. Totally worth it.