Our story so far: To aid the electrician in wiring the old Methodist church we were turning into our home, I got busy choosing light fixtures.

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Lighting is the type of detail one only notices when one is paying attention. Suddenly, I was in the market for light fixtures, and I realized most lighting is so boring. But when I saw something interesting, well, it deserved to be admired. More than once while Tyler shopped in the building supplies department of a big box retailer, I would wander the aisles of the lighting department gazing up at all the flamboyant options until I got a kink in my neck.

Some of our light fixtures would be of the recycle-reuse-repurpose variety, but we still needed a few new ones.

One day, we stopped at a nearby lighting store. All light fixtures, all the time. The knowledgeable salesman (and owner, I found out later) showed off trendy options, affordable options and distinctive options plus all the options we could get in every option: More sockets? A different finish? Bigger? And look at how different lightbulbs change the look of a fixture! When he didn’t have the actual light fixture to show me, he pulled out inches-thick catalogs with more looks.

I marveled at his command of the vast inventory.

“I’m a bit of a lighting savant,” he said sheepishly.

I was paralyzed with too many options. He directed me to his website, where I found more options. But there I could do searches by type, size and finish. Still, I couldn’t pull the trigger until consulting with the Lighting Savant, so I made an appointment back at the store where he shepherded me to what I finally decided were the right options.

For the front entryway, I chose a big, airy chandelier of which Joanna Gaines of “Fixer Upper” would be proud.

For the kitchen island, I found a trio of vintage industrial pendants with seeded glass.

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Tomorrow: And for the bathroom vanities? See what we chose here.