I have been keeping a dirty little hot secret from you, and it has to do with my dining room lighting. I often share photos of my dining room on this blog as it is one of my favorite spaces. And the chandelier always gets lots of comments, because it truly is a beauty! I have loved having it and love the vintage style bulbs it had. However, no one warned me about how much heat those bulbs give off. Meals around the table consist of the 4 of us and our guests sweating it out, pretending to be comfortable, and secretly wondering if maybe we should just eat in the dark. I’m not even kidding! For a while I blamed myself for not installing a dimmer switch when we redid the kitchen and dining room a couple years ago. But if I had, I don’t think I would have been able to use the bulbs I had anyhow, and this fixture would not be the same without the vintage style bulbs. Well, well, well, let me tell you how freaking ecstatic I was when I saw that Ace Hardware carried LED vintage style dimmable light bulbs! Mind. Blown. We decided we could tackle installing a dimmer switch in the dining room ourselves, and swap out the bulbs, allowing us to dim the lights (a 12 bulb chandelier also puts out a ton of light!) and turn down the heat intensity!
Around our house, I do most of the DIY projects… there have been some great projects in the history of Primitive & Proper that have, however, been made possible due to the joint efforts of me and my husband, Chris. We’ve created industrial pipe built ins, planked a cedar mudroom, planked our bedroom wall….. the sky’s the limit, right? With all of these past projects under our belts, surely we could change out a light switch.
You guys…. it was so easy, that Chris was able to do it without me while I was at work. SO flippin’ easy!
One thing to note is that our dining room has two light switches, one at each entry to the space. Because of that, we needed to get a 3-way switch dimmer. (I may or may not have realized that and ordered the wrong one which had to be exchanged…. oops! We are newbies when it comes to electrical work!) Once we had the right switch, the job was done in just 5 minutes.
The first step is to SHUT OFF THE BREAKER. DO NOT PASS GO until your breaker is off. You could electrocute yourself, and Chris has already learned once from experience, that being electrocuted blows. So no mistake made this time, and he turned the breaker off. (In his defense, when he was electrocuted, we thought that the breaker we were working on was off.)
Once the breaker has been turned off, remove the switch plate, and then remove the old switch by unscrewing it from the wall. Ours had two screws which anchored it to the stud, one above and one below the switch.
After the switch has been unscrewed from the wall, you will be able to pull it out a bit from the wall, although it will still be screwed to the electrical wiring. Loosen the screws that hold the wires. Uncoil the wires from the switch and remove the switch entirely. The image below shows the screws that hold wiring being loosened.
Next, place the wiring around the screws of the new dimmer switch, and tighten in place.
Once the electrical wires are secured by the tightened screws, screw the entire switch back into the wall and replace the switch plate. Check out the slide toggle on the right to dim it!
Turn on your breaker, and test it out!
Here is the space with no lights on….
And here it is with the lights all the way up. Please note I did not edit the lighting or color of these photos with the lights on so that you could accurately see them lit and dimmed.
As you can see, that’s 12 light bulbs putting off a good amount of light. So when we want to have those cozy more intimate meals around the table with our family and friends we can now dim the lights to be exactly as we want! Here they are dimmed down a bit.
I am really looking forward to entertaining this holiday season, and not sweating it out under bright hot lights! I am so glad that Ace Hardware carries these awesome vintage style light bulbs in a dimmable LED version! From now until November 1st, if they buy two select Feit LED bulbs at Ace, they get one of equal or lesser value free! So hurry over purchase yours in store or online today!
By the way, have you entered my giveaway for a $100 value Ace gift card? Enter here!
I am a member of the Ace Bloggers Panel and Ace Hardware has provided with products used within this project. I was also compensated for my time and this blog post. All opinions and positions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Ace Hardware.
