We've Landed!!

After over a month, we finally have lights in our stairwell landing up to the second level of our home.  We searched and searched and searched for lights that we loved, and we finally settled on a pair of these guys from Pottery Barn:

Rustic Glass Sconce

Courtesy of Pottery Barn

After much deliberation, we realized that these were the right lights for the space.  I generally avoid shopping at Pottery Barn (the only other item I've purchased there is the Diamond Jute Rug that is in our dining room) because it's an expensive store, and they don't often offer coupons or have online coupon codes.  I also don't like paying shipping charges, but since most retail Pottery Barn locations don't carry hardwired lights, there was no getting around the shipping charge. 

What I did try, however, was a gift card service that buys and sells gift cards to many popular stores at reduced rates.  For example, if you have a $200 purchase you'd like to make at Pottery Barn, you can buy a $200 Pottery Barn gift card through Plastic Jungle at 14% off the face value = $172 out of your pocket for a $200 gift card. 

Card Woo is another gift card supplier that I ended up using because Plastic Jungle was sold out of Pottery Card gift cards the night I decided to make my big, bad Pottery Barn purchase.  Card Woo discounted my $200 Pottery Barn gift card 11%, so I paid $178 for a $200 gift card.  I bought it on a Friday night with the idea that the electronic card numbers would be emailed to be within a short period of time.  I had my Pottery Barn order all ready to go.  I waited and waited.  I finally read the fine print and realized that Card Woo sends out the electronic gift card numbers within 24 hours on business days only.  Shoot.  I waited until Monday morning and as soon as I received my gift card numbers from Card Woo via email, I went back to www.PotteryBarn.com to place my long awaited light order and found this:

Order Difficulties

We're sorry, the Rustic Glass Sconce, Set of 2, Clear (7607716) is on backorder until June 11, 2011.
To view the item in your shopping bag, please click Change Order. To keep this item in your shopping bag and proceed to checkout, please click Continue.

Really?  Really?  I don't know why this keeps happening to me, but there was no way I was waiting until June 11th for my lights.  I called the online customer service line to find out if there was a chance I would get the lights sooner, like maybe the whole backorder thing was a mistake.  She said that the date Pottery Barn was expecting to receive more inventory was June 10.  She then gave me a list of a couple stores that showed inventory of the lights. 

I feverishly wrote down the phone numbers and ended up placing my order with Ashley at the Pasadena, CA store.  She had two single sconces in stock but was able to price match the $21 discount that is offered online if you buy two, and thank goodness, my Card Woo gift card worked like a charm.  My total for the two lights ended up being $192 with tax, shipping and my Card Woo discount of $22.

The lights arrived on Friday, were installed by my main man Saturday morning, and I LOVE THEM!!  Ironically, while typing up this post, I checked the Pottery Barn website and they appear to be magically back in stock.  I don't know how or why that happened, but I don't care.  I had to make an extra call or two, but I got my lights when I was ready for them.  I'm a happy camper. 

And as unimpressive as they currently look on camera, here they are:

I don't know why they show so poorly on camera, but in person they are loverly, and my head just clears them when I walk under them (Bill's not as lucky, but the stairwell is wide enough that it shouldn't be a problem.)

Of course, we needed to find a new place for our castoff bench from this post, so for now it's living here:

And here is a laundry basket full of framed goodies that I'm hoping to hang gallery style on the wall that the lights are hung.  I just need to wait until I come up with a layout I like and acquire enough 3M picture hanging strips to adhere them all to the wall:

I'd like to achieve a look similar to this Pottery Barn image:

For now, I'm just loving the fact that we now have light in our stairwell at night!