My long national nightmare is over: I have finally replaced the lights in my main bathroom.

If you’re new here, these are the lights that were in my condo’s main bathroom—I have one full bathroom and one half bathroom—when I purchased it and moved in last summer:

I’ve always thought they were ugly and would eventually replace them. The condos were built in the early 1980s, and I assumed it was an original fixture. There was a guy who lived here before me who I bought the condo from, and I doubt a guy would pick out lights like that. A few people who have been over to see my condo have liked them, and I said I’d give them the lights once I get rid of them. (There was also a matching dome light over the toilet off to the left, out of the picture. No fish, but same looking crystal and bottom knob.)

However, the time has come to replace them. At the end of August, we got hit with a really nasty thunderstorm and it knocked out my garage door opener and kitchen light. I replaced the garage door opener last month, and I had an electrician come out to check if the kitchen light had just died or if there was something wrong with the switch. He said it was just the light, so that meant I had to buy a new fixture.

My dad suggested that since the electrician would have to come back out to install the kitchen light, why not buy new bathroom lights and have those replaced, too? I always knew I wanted to replace the bathroom lights but other stuff came up. But now was my chance.

I spent some time looking at fixtures online at Home Depot, which felt very adult to me. We placed an order for a kitchen light, bathroom vanity lights, and an overhead light. Once those came in, I had to go to Home Depot in person to buy light bulbs; I brought Josh with me, who ended up just playing with all of the animated Christmas decorations by the entrance.

Yesterday, the electrician came to install all of the lights, and I’m so happy. 1: It’s going to be nice to finally have an overhead kitchen light again, and 2: No more fish lights!

It’s amazing how big the bathroom feels already by just changing the vanity lights. I’m really happy with how they look and glad I finally got around to getting rid of the fish lights.