Fun With Home Improvement!

So today we decided to change out the existing aggressively 70's Holy God UGLY light fixtures that came with the house.

There were three, one large one (admittedly more 80's than 70's, someone had at least made an attempt) over the foyer...

...and two anemic hallway fixtures, identical to one another.

And yes, in keeping with what we found in the rest of the house, we were not a BIT surprised to see that all had paint slopped on them.

Well...maybe the hallway ones weren't as ugly when turned on and weren't really that ba--

Nope.  Never mind.  Turning them on only allows you to see that the previous folks had, in the spirit of equality, also slopped paint on the glass shade.

Soon the hallway lights were taken down and changed out to matching fixtures made in this century!

Yay!

Now for the big one over the entryway, which needless to say, looks as if it was painted into place.

My husband calls me. "Hey, come get a load of this!"
I involuntarily whimper and go to see, dragging my feet a bit since calling each other over to glimpse the latest horror unearthed in any household project has become a morbid game of one-upmanship.
Hang on a tick, what's with the base of the thing, on the ceiling?  What IS that peeking out?
"What IS it?"  I whine.  It has corners. 
He doesn't know, but soon all is revealed.

Ah, a craptacular, half-assed ceiling patch!  Naturally!

The real kicker is that you can see that this fixture was actually the THIRD one the house has had here, if the initial hole the patch is covering was the first--the small circular mark betrays all.  You can see the larger round mark where the current fixture was.  Lovely. I especially like the fact that while the smaller fixture was up, the big ugly square patch was visible in all it's glory.  Classy.

Bracing for the worst, we remove the square patch to see what new delights await us.

Hey, we're finally down to the original ceiling fixture!  Despite that this is inside the house, they used a cheap exterior fixture.  And ain't it attractive! And of course, of course they hadn't masked the thing off when they sprayed new acoustical goop on the ceiling, they just coated the entire fixture with it. I was not at all surprised to see that the original ceiling sported typical 70's metallic gold flecks on it.

Dear God in Heaven.  I'm starting to wonder if my house was a prison in it's previous life.

The wiring is checked and secured to make sure it isn't going to burn down the house some night while we sleep.  Unfortunately, the ridiculous square ceiling patch is needed to cover the hole, so back up it goes, but not before my husband writes an explanatory note of apology to future homeowners, denying responsibility for the thing.  At least this time it will be covered and won't be peeking out like clockspider.

New fixture covers the prior ugliness, costs more than 2 1/2 cents and matches the decor, yay!

I count today as a little victory in the war against 40 years of previous tenants' jihad against this poor house, a small but helpful step.

The bullet holes in the garage wall on the deck out back are for another day, I still need to do some research on how to patch those.