Can you just set the table 2.5 inches off from both the sconces and the chandelier? No one is going to notice a 2.5 inch difference.

A ceiling fixture can still be swagged and look good~it's not going to 'ruin the look' of the fixture itself. I don't know any other way of making it look centered, other than wallpapering the ceiling with a very busy design~OUCH! ;o)

Can you use a ceiling medallion there after moving light it should cover existing hole then?

I do not understand why "moving it is not an option"?

I'm with dillydally - it should be moved. Even if your plans were wrong, the contractor should have contacted you when he realized it would be off centre. His fault not yours. But no matter who's fault it is, it should be fixed. It is probably an afternoons work and if you don't fix it, it will bother you forever.

Hi susieq - couldn't see your picture - can you just post a link?

dillydally - moving the box is not an option right now, after all we've spent retaping, skimming and painting the ceilings to have to do it all again (dining room ceiling flows into foyer). Plus don't want to mess up brand new floor. DH would kill me!

I was wondering if I could just put a hook in 5" over and over it with a ceiling medallion - do they make them deep enough to be able to hide the wires (and chain/threaded part of light if I need to keep it connected there for additional support)? Or are they pretty flat? I guess we could epoxy the brass canopy of the light onto the medallion to cover the hole, since there would be nothing to screw the nut that normally holds it onto?

Though first I guess we'll try splitting the difference - not sure if we have enough room to angle an 8x10 rug, but if we angled the table toward the corners no one would notice the chandelier being offcenter...

I also used a ceiling medallion to cover up where I moved a chandelier a few inches over when I remodeled my kitchen. They come in all sizes but the general rule is to get one the same size as or slightly larger than your chandelier. If you don't like the ones available at your local stores there are hundreds of styles online which would fit almost any decor. Some even come in 2 pieces so you don't have to disconnect anything. You would probably need longer lamp screws too. Paint first and caulk around the edges when you are finished.

We can't repaint the ceiling - the BM Flat Muresco ceiling paint does not touch up without flashing. When we retaped and repainted the ceilings after settling cracks the guy who did it chose BM (we originally did Pittsburgh), when we went to touch up a few missed spots in the kitchen a couple weeks later it all flashed, had to pay another guy to put a second coat over the entire downstairs ceiling (open floor plan).

What does "flashed" mean? Are you talking about how a spot looks different & glossy when it's touched up?

If yes, I discovered that if I painted a touch up spot with Kilz white primer before putting on the exterior color, you couldn't tell it had been painted later than the rest of the area.

If this is what you are talking about, maybe try it on a scrap piece of drywall?

I would center the chandelier - otherwise you will never be entirely happy. Repaint the whole ceiling if you need to. Do it right. That is too important not to be exact.

I'm still confused. You paid a guy to paint and then found missed spots. You tried to touch up the missed spots yourself and it did not look right, so you hired another guy to paint the whole area all over? Why did not the first guy come back to do the touch ups?

I think you can have an electrician put a second hole in the ceiling and extend the conduit run the few inches. Then put up a medallion to cover the hole. Don't put a swag with a hook under the medallion. Isn't the off center chandy the problem of the contractor to fix?

As far as worry about ruining the floors - just put down a tarp when you have the work done.

Dillydally - here's the long story.

Built a new modular house last summer. Lots of ceiling cracks (wall to wall), some appeared after we had painted with Pittsburgh paint, some showed up after the house had been on the foundation 6 months. Factory finally sent someone to fix them Feb 2008. Hired my next door neighbor (not original painter, but a pro) to skim all the ceilings to blend in the retaped seams, and repaint entire downstairs ceilings in April. He only used 1 coat of primer, 1 coat of BM paint. He came back to touch up missed spots just before getting on a plane for vacation. Later that day after it dried I saw it had flashed (lighter color, shiny - BM flat still has some sheen to it). I tried calling him to come over and put another coat on the entire ceiling to blend i in, he never returned my calls. So I called my original painter (who charges about half what my neighbor did) to come and repaint the downstairs ceilings and touch up a few places upstairs. Also had a lot of nail pops in the walls, cracks in the stairwells that we'd patched, needed a lot of wall paint. Anyway, finally got that done, got the dining room floor in (we've been living in the house a year by this time) and I noticed the chandelier is off. DH says I designed it that way to shift table away from china cabinet. I found my emails to the builder and the sconces were supposed to be shifted closer to the front wall too (back one 4.5ft from china cabinet, next one 4.5ft from that, so only 4 ft from front wall, he put it 4.5ft from front wall, 4 ft from other sconce instead). So I guess we'll just try splitting the difference or angling the table after we get the china cabinet in, if we have to we'll move the one sconce (sheetrock and paint easier to patch on wall than ceiling, esp. since other side of wall is garage and we can do all the wiring there, just need to cut new hole for electrical box on dining room side, pull out old box through garage side, and use cutout circle from new box to patch the old place). DH says he is not doing anything more with these ceilings - we've spent over $6000 on interior paint between original paint job and the 2 painters doing "touchups".

Here's the link, can't imagine why you can't see pic. on the post?

Here is a link that might be useful: {{!gwi}}

Oh, I see now what the contingencies are. It's a modular home. I did not see that in any of the previous posts. I was worried about what you said about cracks showing after the house settled on the foundation, thinking it was a stick built home. The cracks showing up like that would not be a good sign of what is to come down the road with a stick built. I now understand about all the taping and stuff. You don't have plaster walls and ceilings. I got it now.

A ceiling medallion seems like a good solution.

You can still move electrical boxes in a modular - I moved the one in the center of the kitchen before we had the house painted, it wasn't going to be anywhere close to the center of the (site-built) island. Also a recessed light that had "wandered" into the family room. But now that we've spent all this money just repainting (the modular factory fixed the cracks for free), DH does not want to tear apart the dining room ceiling and have to repaint all the way into the foyer. Plus, as he reminded me, I wanted the chandelier closer to the front wall because the table would be too close to the china cabinet if we centered it front-to-back in the room. The problem, as I discovered last night after digging through emails to the builder, was that they didn't place the sconces where I wanted them. Not a big deal, I'll move the sconce later if it looks really awful when we put the table in.

Some of the cracks were really just bad tape jobs, edge of tape showing. Others were actual cracks factory said my builder should have taken care of before we painted. But my builder was very inexperienced (had just signed with this modular factory we wanted to use, they gave him our territory so we really had no choice). He was just throwing more mud on the cracks without retaping. Once they put the tape on, no more cracks (just some humps). Our old (1988) house had swirled plaster ceilings and skim-coated drywall, but I understand most stick-built houses these days are just sheetrock, flat painted ceilings anyway.

We wanted to move in less than a year from when DH got new job, didn't think we'd make it if we stick-built. Plus a lot of my family has done modular, we thought it would be better quality since it was built in controlled conditions. And I couldn't keep an eye on a stick builder living 100 miles away with son still in school.

Now, I just dry-mopped the dining room floor and we have a cracked board (splitting from end) 3ft from center. It'll be hidden under the rug. Either the end was split already, or it split when installer hammered it into the pattern (spiraling rectangles). Unless he can split it with a wood chisel, pull out the pieces, and just face-nail the replacement, we'd have to pull out the whole center of the floor (about 12 sf) to get to it. I have a lot of wood left over - should I ask installer to replace that piece?