Olivia Pope Lights

March 10, 2015 Courtney Foster Shearer

I feel like our whole turn the solarium into an office project has been dragging on FOREVER. We make progress then pause for months. Progress, pause, progress, progress, loooong pause and finally I'm back with a little progress.

Sconce lights!!!

The addition of lighting had been part of our overall office plan from the get go. While the room has a ceiling fan/light and gets great natural light, we thought sconces would be a great source of task lighting. For months I scoured the internet in search of the perfect light. It was tough. So many cool options, but our needs were sort of specific: back plate diameter no bigger than 5", reasonably affordable and aesthetically interesting, you know, not just pretty, but cool. It's a tall order to fill, but after months and months of deliberation we decided to go with the Soho Sconce from Shades of Light .

You know what goes really good with new lights? Electricity.

Unfortunately for us, the only outlet in the room was on the opposite side of the wall from where our sconce lights were intended to hang. Womp. Womp. So, step number 1 was getting an electrician out to add some outlets.

Once we got electricity in the wall, our plan was to wire the sconce lights off the new outlets. For a low profile look we decided to recess the switches horizontally into the window sill.

Brent began by tracing the shape of the junction box on the sill.

Next, he used his drill to cut the outline of the box.

Once the hole was cut out, the junction box was placed and it was time to get those lights mounted.

The plan was to mount the lights to the columns, but the columns were solid, so we ended up having to run a conduit on the side of the column to house the wire. Not ideal, but it ended up blending in pretty well. So much so I actually forgot we had conduits until I wrote this. HA!

The lights went up and the rest is history.

So, the lights are great; they add pizazz and polish to the space and I love how their installation has taken our solarium-turned-office one step closer to completion. But you know what I really, really love?! The fact that Olivia Pope, the fast talking, sharp dressed, red wine drinking rock star from the show Scandal has the same sconces in her apartment.

Photo from google search.

Did she copy me? I mean, I would never go and say something like that per-say, but it does make me feel good to know that Olivia and I are on the same wave-length style wise. I'm even contemplating updating my resume: Courtney Shearer - Kitchen & Bath Designer, Blogger and style soul mate with Olivia Pope. Y'all can email me if you want an autograph................ :)

Unless otherwise noted all photos are my own.