When we recently wrote about Our Love/Hate Relationship With Our Older Home, one of the things that came up in the comments section (thanks to commenters Karen and DC from Young Adult Money) was dealing with one of the unfortunate side effects of buying an older home. In particular, figuring out what to do with the ugly fluorescent lighting.
Our house was built in the mid-1980′s, and had fluorescent lighting in the kitchen and bathrooms. These lights are not only unflattering, but in our house they were also falling apart. Needless to say, we wanted them gone, but we weren’t sure exactly how that process was going to go.
The Before
This is a shot of our kitchen before we closed on the house. The empty hole there is for a stove/oven. 
There are a few ridiculous things in this picture that we knew we wanted to address.
- That’s just a sheet of stainless steel with painted wooden quarter round as border for the backsplash. I could be wrong, but this felt like it was screaming “fire hazard!” as there was no insulation behind it, and the stainless would have abutted any stove/oven that got installed.
- The cabinets looked super dated. They are not real wood (which is less obvious in the pics), but are fake wood laminate. The tentative game plan was to remove all the faces, sand down the veneer finish, paint them all uniformly and remount. Estimated time investment – A LOT.
- The lights. Wow, they were… ummm… special. The previous owners had a thing for maroon, so had painted a lot of random walls and doors in the house maroon, including the fan blades here. (A closer up pic is below.) So we had the fan with the lights in the center, then four fluorescent lights surrounding the recessed area that were clearly falling apart. Ugly city.
The Inspiration
We knew we wanted big changes on a small budget, but weren’t 100% sure how it was going to go. Other than that the stainless had to be gone ASAP. Luckily, we brought our friends K&D over and, with their endless optimism and years owning both a cleaning business and a handyman business, they immediately showed us the way.
K said, “Your cabinets are great! What are you talking about? Just clean them up, and get new hinges and handles. They’ll sparkle with a little bleach, I promise.”
D said, “Oh your lights are no big deal. What you’ve got to do is take them out, and mount some crown moulding to the bottom of the recessed area so it makes a little pocket. Then get some LED rope lights and just stuff the rope lights down into the pocket. It’ll make a great accent light, then you put whatever you want in the center.”
Mr. PoP and I weren’t 100% sure that K&D’s vision would really be as easy to execute as they made it sound, but since we didn’t have a better plan at the time, we decided to give it a shot. After all it was cheap enough that we could always undo it if the end result looked awful.
The After
Here’s how their vision panned out.
We love it. What do you think?
K was spot on with the cabinets. Yes, they are still almost 30 year old fake wood laminate. But giving them a good scrub with a healthy portion of bleach and swapping out the hinges and handles (~$35 for all of them in the entire kitchen) gives it a much lighter and more modern feel than the old dark dirty hinges. Seriously, you don’t want to know how gross and sticky some of those hinges were. Eeewww.
I don’t even know how many hours of hard labor K saved me with her suggestion.
As for the lights, once Mr. PoP got the hang of the angle cuts for the corners of the crown moulding, the whole thing came together pretty well. Here are the basic steps: 
- Pull out all the fluourescent light fixtures, and patch all the holes to the electrical except for 1. The rope lights will need only 1 connection.
- Cut the crown moulding (we used this kind throughout our house) to fit. Don’t hesitate to practice the corner cuts on smaller pieces of wood first.
- Nail the crown moulding in place, and use caulk to cover up the nail holes and any gaps that you have at the base or corners. Any holes at the base will become obvious when the rope light is in and light is shining through the bottom.
- Connect your rope light to the remaining electrical access point, and string it along the pocket you’ve created. Ours was wound pretty tight, so we put nails every 18-24″ that prevented the rope light from popping up. But in the 3 years since we did this, the rope light has conformed to its little space and the nails are superfluous.
- Paint everything super pretty. We went with a satin finish on the paint, except for the crown moulding which is semigloss throughout the house.
Bonus – Better Bathroom Lighting
After – Pretty crown moulding border with a halogen fixture mounted in the center.
These lights were single switched (not double switched like the kitchen), and since adding rope light around the edges would have meant running wires and adding an outlet, we decided they were fine just with the crown moulding border.
On a side note, if we were to do it again, we wouldn’t use the halogens. They throw off a good amount of heat, and they actually burn out pretty quickly for some reason. Because of that, we typically leave the fixtures so only one or two of the bulbs is functioning at any given time. A little odd, but it works for us.
Dollar for dollar, these projects were some of the cheapest ways we managed to update the look and feel of our house without spending big bucks.
What do you guys think of the results? Any questions? Have you ever done a similar project that provided great “bang for buck” results when it came to updating?
Looks good. I never would have thought to use LED rope lighting in the house as an accent. That is pure genius!
I know! I wish we could take credit for the idea, but it was all thanks to our friends’ genius. =)
It looks really good! The cabinets don’t look so old anymore. I have recently discovered lime wash painting and it stains a lot but is incredibly cheap, with $5 I painted the whole house! You can use pigments for colored painting too. Great fresh look for so little money.
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Thanks, Pauline! I’ll have to look into lime wash painting. $5 for a whole house sounds amazing considering our typical budget for painting the inside of a house runs around $300.
Looks great!
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Wow, I really like that lighting solution for the kitchen. People always seem to want to spend a lot of money on retrofits, when a cheap solution can be just as good.
With regards to your bathroom lighting, a good solution might be to swap out your halogen bulbs for LED replacements like this one (http://www.1000bulbs.com/product/63093/LED-PAR1662550.html). Typically halogen bulbs last around 5,000 hrs, and these LED bulbs last upwards of 30,0000 hrs. They also throw off almost no heat, and use 80% less energy (cost effective).
We did this in the elevators at my work. The facilities guys were tired of changing the halogen bulbs and it always used to get weirdly hot in the elevators. We did it about a year and a half ago, and none of them have burnt out.
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Thanks! We were really pleased with how it turned out, especially considering how little it cost.
As for the halogen bulbs, I think we’ve finally used the last spare one that we had out in the garage, so I should really look for better replacement bulbs. Thanks for the reminder and the link. Our bulbs have a different funny connector, so hopefully they make LEDs with that connector/plug.
Wow, this is awesome. It actually looks super pricey because they’re recessed. What value from a previous eyesore
Mandy @MoneyMasterMom recently posted..Getting Better Sleep just got REALLY XXX-citing!
=) It’s lovely to not have to deal with the previous eyesore everyday, that’s for sure!
Definitely a good idea to go LED. They use SOOOO much less electricity. We’re in the midst of swapping over all our lightbulbs too.
I had a quick flick through various catalogues, checking and comparing “lumens” (how much light is actually given off) with halogen lights and LEDs, and on average LED’s use about 17% for the same light output.
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I think that’s going to have to be on my “to do” list. It’ll cost a little more up front, but hopefully be well worth the expense.
Came here after enjoying your comments on Mr Money Mustache. Love what you did! It really looks beautiful.
Thanks, Heidi! Glad to have you visit our site =)
It looks great !! Great work
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Thanks, Gillian! I think the best part is that it looks so much more impressive than it actually was in terms of time and cost =)
I think the small changes made a huge difference. It looks great.
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Thanks, Sean!
Yay, the post I was waiting for
haha
The kitchen is great! Umm, the stainless steel backsplash was interesting.
K&D need to come over and come up with brilliant, cheap solutions for me.
Yeah, the day we closed on the house we came over with the keys and a couple of claw hammers and took the stainless steel down. I think the previous owners had watched too much Trading Spaces or something.
K&D are amazing with the ideas they come up with. They can seriously look at a pile of trash and figure out some awesome reuse out of it.
wow! those small changes really made a big difference!
When some of the big spending items go unnoticed by guests (like a new roof), it’s nice when we get to show the cheap ones off a bit =)
I looks so much better with the new changes. I wouldn’t have thought it would make such a big difference, but there you go.
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Yeah, I had my doubts, especially when it came to the hinges and handles on the cabinets, but even those little changes made a big difference in how it felt. =)
I really like the new look. I’m not big on fluorescent lighting either. It just makes things look older than they are. Great job!
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People, too! I know I feel like I look about 5 years older when I’m under fluorescent lighting =)
Thanks, Holly!
Wow, changing out the lights and freshening up the cabinets really made a difference! Our last major renovation was the bathroom in our rental condo. We didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so we kept the majority of the existing bathroom but got rid of the mauve tub and got a deep soaker, updated the tiles from (again) mauve to a sleek, light charcoal colour and also swapped out the fixtures for modern ones. Total cost was $2000 and they took care of the mold behind the wall too.
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Glad you got rid of the mold – though I must say, I’m always a little sad to see the old school crazy tile colors go. One of my first apartments had a bathroom that was covered in pink tile all over all the walls and tub, so I have a weird sentimental attachment to the tacky tiles. =).
I looked at the picture before reading and was really hoping you weren’t going to say something like “We love our new backsplash!” For our rental, I spent way too much time trying to clean the cabinet hardware. It would have made more sense to just replace it, but new paint made the very dirty, dated cabinets look new. Amazing what a few simple changes will do. Great job.
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Yeah, the backsplash was something special. And it was ridiculous how it was attached too… glued to the wall. It actually took chunks off that we had to patch later to get it all off.
Oooh, I’d love before/after pics of the cabinets you painted. Did it take you forever?
Wow what a difference. I’m totally impressed that you guys were able to do the crown molding yourselves. I love the bf dearly, but he’s certainly not handy around the house. And rope lighting, who knew? Nice work.
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Thanks! The crown moulding looks harder than it is (says the person who isn’t allowed to touch saws…). We used it here, and put it up in all the bedrooms, and it really classes up the place. =)
Nice job.
Ohhh that stainless backsplash thingie…where do people get ideas like that? Same place the maroon came from, no doubt.
Awesome idea for using those rope lights with the crown molding!
Okay, next time you feel the remodeling impulse: see how you’ve got wiring up in the middle of that recess lashup? Here’s how people around here have dealt with those recess things.
Take the wiring (may need an electrician for this) and run it down to the outsides of the recess. Along all four edges, install rows of recessed light cans. Then use the box-shaped recess to house a skylight (where your present fixture is). Voila! Natural light during the day and plenty of artificial light for the nighttime hours.
It needs to be a real skylight, not one of those tubes that ends up reminding you of a Mack Truck headlight every time you look at it. Actual skylights cost less to have installed than you might expect, especially if you have a flat roof. But they should be installed by an experienced and reputable dealer to avoid problems with leaks.
Nice job on the cabinets. I would never have thought of using bleach on the things! They’re vastly improved. The whole kitchen looks much more up-to-date and comfortable.
Funny about Money recently posted..Medicare Part D: The Biggest Rip That Ever Came Down the Pike?
Thank you for the compliments! D tried to talk us into some canned lighting over the sink, too – but we never got there.
I love the idea of the skylight in the kitchen, but sadly above that is the only accessible area of our attic. The AC handler (as well as all of our Christmas stuff) lives up there, so no skylight. =( But, two of the reasons I initially fell in love with the house are the two skylights near the top of our semi-vaulted ceilings in the living room. I love falling asleep in the afternoon patch of sunlight they throw across the couch.
Wow, the effect of switch to the crown and painting is astounding! So simply and cheap! Plus, as Mandy noted, it looks like a costly upgrade, not a modernization of outdated style.
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Thanks, Anne! FWIW, it’s also way easier to clean than the other fixture would have been. Just a quick dust a couple times a year and it’s done.
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The improvement is great. But the one I like the most is removing the stainless from your wall. I don’t know, its my first time to see that. It might have a purpose but honestly, its a sore to the eye. But now, you can have a rest in that place. Pleasant.
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Yeah, the stainless steel was awful. It was literally the first thing we did after signing the closing docs on the house. We drove over and removed that!
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