baby, you're a firework!: the maskros installation.

 Hello everyone!


I had so many activities going this weekend!!! And I mean house activities, so get ready for some exciting bloggie entries coming up!

Friday afternoon, I got this awesome globe! 

I had been looking for one for a while. Most I found had a plastic circumference thingy (i have no idea what that thing that goes around one side is called), so I was excited to find one with a metal.. thingy. 

I wanted to put it on the TV stand bookshelf, but it didn't fit.. of course. So I made room for it on the sideboard table. It was time for those candles to go, anyhow. 

And what is that sitting behind the fish?

OH, IT'S JUST MY DYING BAMBOO!!!!!!

It is suppose to be IMPOSSIBLE to kill these things. You're suppose to just put them in water. And that's it. They don't need much sunlight. No dirt.  Sigh... can't keep a damn stick alive.. At least I've kept two pups breathing and well for 6 years, eh? 

Richard helped me flip the glass on the dining room table because apparently it's been upside down ever since I put it on there. It wasn't very smooth, and water rings and such wouldn't come off it no matter how much I scrubbed. I guess the frosted side absorbed things. Oh well. Looks much better now! 

Onto the big decor change: 

The Maskros Light from IKEA!! 

Such a tiny box for such a big fixture! I got this thing LAST December when we went to Atlanta for the SEC Championship game.. and made an epic 6 hour IKEA trip before we came home... no joke. 

Most of the parts! I'm going to try to make this installation pretty detailed because Richard and I tried to find the instructions online, and couldn't. If you've been to IKEA, you know they give you instructions with just pictures, no words. And since their stuff is from overseas, not everything matches up with U.S. standards. 

In the picture above, you can see on the silver plate, there are three wires coming out: a green & yellow wire (it's one wire with 2 colors) and a white wire and black wire coming out of the thick white tube (wire casing?). 

Now here is the sad chandelier. The dome was never put back on after the house fell apart when I started this bloggie! 

We moved all the furniture out of the center of the room.

BIG STEP: I TURNED OFF THE BREAKER.

Don't forget to do that y'all.

Richard stood on the step ladder and unscrewed the piece of metal holding the chandelier onto the ceiling while I held onto it so it didn't come crashing to the ground. Then he unplugged the wire caps, and it was ready to be moved out of the way.

Hang onto the wire caps and the screws that held the light fixture in place.

Now, in the picture below, you can see there are two wires. Remember the three wires on the fixture? We tried several different scenarios, flipping on the breaker and trying it out each time. Word of advice: don't screw in the silver plate until you get it right, or else you'll have to unscrew it each time. 

This is how we got it to work: 

Cap off the yellow and green wire. You don't need it. Cap the white one on the lamp to the white one coming out of the ceiling, and cap the black one on the lamp to the one coming out of the ceiling. We reused the caps we had taken off in the beginning because they were bigger than the ones provided in the box. 

We turned the breaker on and flipped the switch.

And it worked!!!

YEEAAHHH!

Now time to assemble the firework.

We followed the instructions from IKEA. They were pretty self explanatory. 

Wolverine was  so proud of the progress! 

Hahaha! I wish that wasn't fuzzy!

The spikes are finished!

Now time to load up the paper sparkles!

They clicked on there super easily. In one blog we read, it said it took this girl 2 days and tons of paper cuts to get this put together..

Not the case. It probably took us about 20 minutes to figure out how to hook up the electricity, and about 10 to get the paper sparkles on there.

I tried to flatten the sparkles a bit before popping them on the wires.

I bent it back through my hands.

It flattened out pretty well.

Being pushed down in this box didn't help..

Finally all on!!!!!!!! 

EEEEE!

Richie took some pictures of our handy work.

I lubs it! 

One thing to take note on... the "cup" at the top that holds the excess cord is suppose to pop onto the metal ring. It doesn't. It's too small to fit over it. I googled it, and others had this problem as well. I'm going to get some white putty to hold it in place soon.

Of course I had to get a picture of the view from outside! 

And here it is once more with the room put back together!

I really like the shadows it throws on the walls! Almost wallpaper-ish.

I really need to find some dining chairs. Just two isn't cutting it. Hopefully it'll happen soon!