Sage – Author at Plaster & Disaster

Today I’m finishing my short series of posts on the DIY projects that were part of the guest room makeover. Our topic today: the overhead light, which involved installing a new socket kit with an on/off switch in a plug-in pendant light.

If you missed it, the guest room makeover consisted of this:

Besides writing about the painting process and then the big reveal with accessories and furniture, I’ve also posted about the emerald green dresser makeover (painting it and then picking new hardware), the map mural wall, and how I made affordable curtains.

But on to today’s exciting topic of overhead lighting! As you may remember me sharing, our house has very few ceiling lights — which is mostly okay, since the ceilings are pretty low and we wouldn’t want fixtures hanging down. In some rooms we do have light switches that connect to outlets, so we can control lights from the doorway. Not so in the guest room, though, and I wanted to remedy this since it’s especially difficult for guests to wander into a strange room and fumble around for a light.

I had on hand a $15 plug-in light that I got from IKEA last September thinking we’d use it in the kitchen (we decided to hold off while we make longer term kitchen plans), and I thought the shape would work so well in this space. However, I was not digging the color:

I also was not digging the fact that it’s a plug-in light with a pretty short cord and no on/off switch — so to turn it on and off, you have to unplug it. This would defeat the whole goal of having a convenient overhead light for guests.

At first I thought maybe I would install a switch onto the existing cord — which didn’t look too too hard — but the cord was so short that I really doubted I could even run it across the ceiling and down the wall by the door, let alone around the room to the nearest outlet. So instead, I researched plug-in light kits with on/off switches, and came across across a very well-reviewed 15-foot socket kit on Amazon (affiliate link – read about our policies), selling for $11 when I found it.

Installing the new kit was incredibly easy. First, I screwed off the round plastic ring that comes on the new socket kit:

Then I took the shade from the IKEA light (which didn’t have its original socket screwed in yet since I had never assembled it) and inserted the new socket. (If you’re using a shade that already has a socket, it should unscrew easily.)

The last step was screwing the ring back on from the inside of the shade.

Done! I was not exaggerating when I said it was incredibly easy (taking non-grainy process shots on my iphone while sitting in my dark craft room, on the other hand…).

With the new socket installed, it was time to deal with the color issue. Obviously I had asked Naomi for advice and suggested all sorts of bright colors, but she thought I should go with a more subdued oil-rubbed bronze look — and you know that if she isn’t jumping on the crazy color bandwagon, she has a good reason. Of course, she was right — I love how it fits with the classic feel of the room, plus matches the ORB finish on the lights we installed in the stairwell and hallway.

Painting this was so easy. First I set it down at my spray painting station, and the table acted as a perfect barrier so I would get a clean edge along the outside lip of the shade without getting any paint inside it (which I wanted to keep white). Next I taped off the end of the cord and then put the rest in a plastic bag so I wouldn’t get paint on it, and came up with a solution to elevate the bag so it wasn’t in the way of painting the shade: I tied the string from the basement overhead light around it so the cord bag was hanging above the shade. I’m not saying I’m a genius. But I know we’re all thinking it. Next I hit the shade with a few thin and even coats of ORB spray paint.

The final step was hanging the light, which was also pretty straightforward. I was worried about the ceiling tiles supporting the weight, but the light is not heavy (less than 1 pound) so it wasn’t an issue. I just figured out where I wanted the light to be, trying to center it on the view of the ceiling from the door as well as the view from the bed. I also tried to roughly calculate how much cord I had to work with to get the on/off switch to fall where I wanted it along the door frame (the switch was about 3/4 of the way along the length of the cord, closer to the plug than the socket). Then I drilled a hole, screwed in a small hook, and hung it up.

To hide the cord as much as possible, I ran it across the ceiling to where the paneling meets the ceiling and then along the top of the paneling to the door. I secured the cord along the paneling by shooting staples around the cord with my staple gun, careful not to pierce it. The staples aren’t strong enough to support any real weight or pressure, but are perfect for keeping the cord in place and aren’t really visible from the ground.

Here’s a section of the cord running along the edge of the paneling, with one staple holding it in place. Not super visible, right?

Once the cord got to the door, I used a few white hooks to bend it around the door frame and ran it down the side of the door. The on/off switch ended up exactly at arm level along the door, which was the whole goal to begin with.

The cord wasn’t long enough to reach all the way to the nearest outlet (I didn’t think it would be), so I picked up a white extension cord and ran that along the trim around the corner to the outlet behind the dresser. Once again, I used staples to hold down the cord.

It’s not like the whole length of cord is invisible, but I don’t think it’s terribly noticeable since everything is white and most people won’t be staring at it as intently as I tend to since it isn’t even visible from the bed.

I’m so incredibly pleased with how it turned out.

And I actually like the shape of the light better with the new socket — it’s a lot smaller than the original one which lets the shade be the star of the show, and it doesn’t look like an add-on since it’s painted the same color as the shade.

All told the project cost $30, but I only counted $15 of it toward the guest room budget since the $15 light I’d bought so many months ago and found sitting in my craft room as I was brainstorming for this project. I love it, both form and function. In the weeks before Maddie moved into the room, I confess that sometimes I would just wander in and flip on the switch for the fun of it.

(Sharing at Two Uses Tuesday, Totally Terrific Tuesday, Create It Thursday, Think and Make Thursday, Your Turn to Shine Link Party, Pin Junkie Pin Party, Link Party Palooza, and Tip Me Tuesday)

Fair warning: today’s post is a little off our normal DIY/home improvement focus. But if things like social psychology and tattoos are interesting to you, read on!

I confess, I’m a wee bit self-involved. I spend a not-insignificant time thinking about me — my strengths, my weaknesses, what conditions help me be at my best, when am I at my worst, what motivates me, what do I want to do with my life, what’s my purpose in the world, and all the other fun questions that leave one questioning their place in the universe. And every once in awhile I come across frameworks and ideas that help fit together a few more pieces of the puzzle — yes we’re all totally unique beings, but there are a lot of systemic explanations for why we operate in the unique ways that we do. Myers-Briggs, the work of David Keirsey, and Susan Cain’s Quiet have all been powerful for me in recent years.

Looks about right to me (Source: Marissa Baker)

I’m not quite ready to delve into a blog post about those concepts and what they’ve meant for me, but today I thought I would share about another idea that has come to mean a lot to me in the past few years: the concept of “flow.” According to social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “flow” is a state of being where you’re fully immersed, fully engaged, fully challenged in what you’re doing — you’re “completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies…Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

It’s an idea that many are already familiar with by different names or by no name at all. Athletes describe themselves as “in the zone,” and as a runner I definitely identify with that concept. I recently watched a documentary about a magician who would sit and shuffle cards for hours in an almost hypnotic state, fully relaxed and yet fully engaged. That’s flow. Maybe it’s a broader definition of what most of us call “passions.”

Ultimately, flow isn’t about the outcome but about the experience itself. DIY is a perfect example of flow — Naomi and I aren’t doing it simply because it’s a cheaper (sometimes…) way to improve our homes, it’s because we enjoy the challenge and reward of dreaming, creating, and puzzling through problems.

Challenge — matched by the ability to conquer the challenge — is a crucial part of flow.

But what I love about the idea of “flow” is that it’s not just about hobbies, but applies to what we do in the workplace as well. I’ve spent a great deal of time in the past few years thinking about what I want from my career — what activities I want to be doing, what kind of organization I want to work for, how I want my job to fit alongside my personal life — and the concept of “flow” gives me a framework for thinking about these questions that goes far beyond the more trite (and highly privileged) “do what you love.”

It’s not about “work never feeling like work” — an aspiration unachievable for many of us — it’s about identifying the activities that engage you and finding ways to incorporate them more into your life and work. Csikszentmihalyi posits that we’re happier and more productive when we’re engaged in flow activities. We can’t choose to only do things that put us in a flow state — most of us have responsibilities in work and life that take us far out of flow. But if we’re truly more fulfilled when we’re doing certain things, then I think we owe it to ourselves to discover those things and make time for them in our lives. I think that’s doable for most of us, even those who don’t have the luxury of turning their greatest passions into a paying career.

I find flow when I’m running, when I’m working on my house, when I’m writing, and when I’m playing with lists, calendars, excel spreadsheets, and other processes to put order around chaos. I’ve found different ways to incorporate each of these into my life, whether it be at work or outside of it. But flow is also about new challenges and growth, and so I hope that I will always be finding new passions and building them into my career and personal life.

So that was the part about flow. Now comes the part about tattoos.

I have two of them. One is on my back, and this post isn’t about that one. If I ever do a post about my love for Lord of the Rings, maybe I’ll share about that first tattoo (yes, it’s Lord of the Rings related). The other one is on my wrist, and it should be pretty obvious why it’s relevant to this post:

I got my first tattoo when I was 19, and the second one was a much more recent addition within the last year. I’d been thinking for a long time about getting another one, and a few years ago started to play around with the idea of flow and how to incorporate that into a tattoo. I considered trying to create a symbol of some sort that would represent the concept, but ultimately decided to be totally literal with it and just write out the word. I’m so creative.

I also considered multiple locations, at first thinking I would do it on my side or somewhere else not very visible. But as I really thought about why I wanted to get this word tattooed on my body, I knew that it needed to be somewhere I could easily see it. The point of it is to remind me to seek flow in my work and in my life. It’s too easy to fall into what’s comfortable or right in front me or most lucrative — but I owe it to myself, and the immense privileges I’ve been afforded, to do my best to find those activities that challenge and engage me and build them into my life. So I picked the inside of my wrist, where I can easily see it when I need encouragement in the face of challenge or frustration or — most dangerous — apathy.

I originally planned to have a close friend come with me when I got it (I’d gone with her to get her most recent tattoo), but when I went to the tattoo parlor to make an appointment, they offered to do it right then and there. Since at its core this is a tattoo about inner motivation, it felt right to be there getting it done alone. Plus it only took about 15 minutes.

So those are my musings about flow and ink and life and work. What do you think, is “flow” a concept that resonates with you? What ideas and philosophies help you think about the world and better understand yourself? Any fun tattoo stories to share?